I've used hire bikes in several places around the world and without fail the "city" bikes have always been terrible. (I specifically mean hired bikes, not city bike schemes like the boris bikes.)
I'm just coming to the conclusion that if you want something that isn't unwieldy, uncomfortable or even unsafe (brakes!) you need to pay extra for a road bike, even if you just use if for pootling round town.
The level of standard expected for road bikes is so much higher, presumably because people rarely rent such things if they don't already cycle. But casual bikes are ridden by casual riders, and the result is a marketplace of terrible bikes. There will be no Elephant bikes, no Paper bicycles, nor anything of that sort. Just the sort of painful and unpleasant experience that puts people off riding and makes it seem much harder than it actually is.
(This post inspired by recent experience in Lanzarote, where we hired a 'city' bike one day and a 'road' bike the next few days from the same shop. Like night and day.)
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