This month I look at Lime Bikes and other dockless e-bikes …

There’s clearly demand for dockless e-bikes, and it’s great if they can get more people in Merton cycling.

In October I met with representatives of both Lime Bikes and Human Forest, both of whom are hoping to reach agreements with Merton Council about the use of their bikes in the borough.

Hope the below information is useful!

Oh, and if you see Lime bikes blocking a pavement – email [email protected] with the details.

Lime Bikes

They have E-bike deployment agreements with 8 London boroughs. Merton is not one, which means that the bikes here are brought by users, they’re “not deployed by Lime”.

In the 8 boroughs, there are Memorandums of Understanding which allow Lime to bring in numbers of bikes and also cover:

• Retrieval times
• Compliant parking zones – bikes can only be left in these zones
• No parking/no riding zones
• The Borough is paid an annual deployment fee

For poorly parked bikes email [email protected] – and the bike will apparently be removed within 1 hour of the email being sent.

Lime claim that the service area is wider than just those 8 boroughs where they have an agreement because otherwise it would cause and “artificial build up on the borders” of the boroughs they have agreements with.

They were challenged that their business model is essentially to allow their users to cause problems in a borough as a way of encouraging the Council to reach agreement with Lime, to solve some of the challenges created.

Human Forest

Their offer is price, being cheaper than their competitors, they have 10 mins free riding a day for all users and their per minute price is a bit cheaper than eg Lime.

If users leave their bikes in a designated “green bay”, it is free. They work with Councils to identify areas for green bays can be identified by Councils, and reckon that in areas with agreements 80% trips end in green bays. You pay to park outside of a green bay – so this does mean you can leave a bike anywhere as long as you’re willing to pay to do so.

They have “Forest Guardians” who patrol areas where people regularly leave bikes inappropriately and they also claim to remove problematic bikes within an hour of a report.

Riders earn ‘points’ by riding that can be spent on free minutes on the bikes or goods and services, available through the “market place” section of the app.

Merton is currently designated a “no parking zone” by them – as they are in discussions with the Council.

Latest updates

At the full Council in November, a member of the public asked about the progress of negotiations and received a rather brief reply.

From my discussions with senior Council officers, progress with one provider has already cleared the “best route in terms of procurement / Agreement” – with the expectation that the bikes will be introduced into the borough in the New Year. With the other less progress has been made.

Wandsworth Council has been in the news recently:

And I also noted that the councillor in charge of transport in Merton was boasting that:

Of course, the Council has been in negotiations with Lime for about four months. Council officers weren’t even aware that Lime were operating in the borough until September, when councillors, including myself raised it in a committee meeting.

Issues with Lime should already be being discussed.

So the promised meeting due to happen “soonest” looks to me like theatre, intended to make Labour Council bosses look tough, rather than anything genuine!