Lib Dems meet Lime as complaints over e-bikes rocket

Following on from the rushed implementation of e-bike parking bays earlier in the year, in June it was announced that e-bike companies had agreed that their users would use designated “physical or virtual” parking bays.

Part of the agreement with the e-bike companies to use the designated bays was that more e-bikes would be deployed by the operators.

It was originally suggested by the Council that only marked bays could be used, but this seems to have been dropped by Council bosses.

In the month since this new system was launched, we’ve seen the number of complaints received by councillors about problem bays rocket.

In response to increasing complaints, Lib Dem leader Cllr Anthony Fairclough recently met with representatives of Lime.

He reports that:

• Lime receive details of complaints from Merton Council - but they also agreed to look at the list of ‘problem’ e-bike bays provided by Lib Dem councillors, to consider how to manage the issues in these areas.
   
• Lime say they played a very limited role in the siting of the existing marked bays, and that the bays are Merton’s choice.
   
• But they broadly accepted that massively increasing the number of e-bikes in the borough at the same time as moving to ‘mandatory parking’ (ie restricting where the bikes can be left) is likely the cause of most of the issues, especially in town centre areas/places where there is a high demand for bikes.
   
• Lime can make it more difficult for people to end their bike journeys outside marked bays but are reluctant to do. They say it’s very difficult to line up the technology with the actual parking bay markings.
   
• They can restrict e-bike ‘deployments’ (ie when Lime vans arrive and leave more e-bikes) to particular parking bays to only certain times of the day, but they also have a contract for a 24 hour service. Sometimes their operatives attend bays to sort problems out, and this can be any time of day or night. We pointed out that when residents raise problems they do not always see an improvement. Lime puts this down to time taken to investigate the issues and monitor them.
   
• Lime expect to have fixed their bikes by the end of the summer to stop them being ‘hacked’ (ie taken without paying for them).
   
• They argue they spend lots of money on training courses around safety, we pointed out the people who most need the training are probably the least likely to take it! Lime will attend local events to give out free bike helmets, if we let them know. They don’t really have any answers as to the risks of damage and injuries caused by their riders – they do not particularly see safety as their responsibility, which is disappointing.

Separately local Lib Dem councillors have raised the management of a number of problem bays across the borough, with both operators and the Council. We have also formally requested a response from the Council on the removal of a small number of bays that seem to cause specific problems and safety issues.