Opinion

Lime Disease? What To Do About The Dockless Bikes That Block Our Streets

M@
By M@

Last Updated 05 September 2024

Lime Disease? What To Do About The Dockless Bikes That Block Our Streets
Some lime bikes on gracechurch street
Lack-of-Gracechurch Street. Image: Matt Brown

How can we make dockless bikes work for the city, not against it?

Cycling is brilliant. Let's put that up front. It's a fast, efficient and green way to get about town. Much progress has been made in recent years to turn London into a cycle-friendly city, at least centrally.

It's not helped, though, by scenes like these.

And from our own recent wanderings, scenes like these:

Huge group of Lime bikes
Image: Matt Brown
Some bikes falling onto a cycle lane
The benarrowing of Farringdon Street. Image: Matt Brown

Such veloclumps are unsightly, and annoying to weave around. For those with pushchairs, extra mobility needs and visual impairments, the frustrations can spill into real safety concerns. Lime bikes are not the only contributors to this pavement pile-up, but they are the most ubiquitous.

Calls have been growing to sort this mess out for some time. Now, one of London's 32 boroughs has issued an ultimatum.  Brent Council wants Lime to improve its bike stowage by 31 October, or its e-bikes  will be banned from the borough. Brent contains around 750 of the electric bikes, and has worked closely with Lime to provide marked bays across the borough. But it isn't working. The council receives regular reports of malpositioned bikes, and often finds itself dealing with Lime's mess.

But how well can these schemes be regulated, without quashing the benefits? The attraction of dockless schemes is that you can pick up a bike almost anywhere, and leave it almost anywhere. It's effectively door to door in central areas. Customers are supposed to leave the bikes in a safe and considerate location, but this is somewhat subjective and relies upon everyone behaving like model citizens.

What can the bike companies do? Well, they could build racks and charge an automatic fine if bikes are not returned to one. This is unlikely to happen. It would come with huge overheads, and would upend the dockless business model and USP. A halfway house is to paint official parking spaces on suitable areas of pavement. These do already exist, but are often full or ignored.

A Lime bike in Ham
The bikes can even be found in relatively remote parts of town. Here's one parked in some wheat, in the village of Ham. Image: Matt Brown

Greater fines for dumbass parking might have some deterrent effect. Another avenue is to force Lime to patrol and respond to any problems in a more timely fashion. Both these measures are suggested by Brent Council.

The problem is now so pressing that Transport for London is considering a total ban on the parking of dockless bikes anywhere other than designated bays. This would certainly provide more clarity, but unless many, many more bays are provided, we'll see more scenes like this one, with popular locations overspilling:

Something clearly has to be done to break this, ahem, vicious cycle. It's not hard to spot problems. We recently spent 30 minutes walking around the Square Mile, specifically looking out for two-wheeled malfeasance. In that short time, across just a handful of streets, we found four clusters that severely limited pavement space, and one that was actively dangerous (below).

Cycle lane blocked by cycles
Cycles blocking a cycle lane near Houndsditch. Image: Matt Brown

Lime recently told the Evening Standard that only about 5% of bikes were parked inconsiderately. That may be so (and is, again, subjective), but with 30,000 Lime bikes in London, that's still 1,500 bikes blocking pavements at any given time — perhaps 2,000 if we include the other companies. Imagine the shock of a radio traffic report that said: "2,000 of London's roads are blocked this morning...".

There is no easy solution to the Lime disease. But, like armchair populists, we're going to suggest one anyway. Let's turn the problem into an opportunity. TfL should go ahead and ban whimsical, anything-goes bike parking. It should then adopt the five-word mantra "Virtual Bays on Every Street" to massively ramp up capacity and convenience. If every residential street could give up one or two of its car-parking bays for bikes and scooters, imagine what that would do for the encouragement of cycling across the city. Companies like Lime could attract many new customers rather than curses. We need these bikes to work with the city, not against it.

Report a problem with this article