Camden Cycling Campaign have a very interesting critique of the London cycle hire proposals on their site.

http://www.camdencyclists.org.uk/info/tforum/London%20Velib%20study%20cr...

Their analysis seems sensible and the bottom line conclusion significant:

"The differences in demographics between the London and Paris areas studied are immense...It seems intuitively unlikely that an area with so few residents will generate the required number of hire cycle journeys. Travelcard Zone 2 or a substantial part of it seem much more likely to support a successful deployment."

I agree there is a serious risk the London scheme could fail, not only because of the lack of residents in zone 1, but because of the perceived hostility of the environment by those who do not cycle already, linked to the lack of effective facilities in London. I observed the start of the Paris scheme, and noted how at that time there were far more segregated cycle facilities in central Paris than in central London, and how the hire stations had been planned to take advantage of these. These facts seem to have been generally overlooked by British commentators on the Paris experience.

If the hire scheme fails it could be disastrous for cycling in London, over and beyond the failure of the specific scheme itself, because it would send a message to politicians that cycling doesn't work in London and is not worth investing in.