Why the tide may lastly be turning on the Lime bike ‘menace’

Florin Lacatus, 58, a former builder, relies on a mobility scooter to take him the 400 yards from his flat in Wembley, north-west London, to his local Tesco.

‘I used to be so active – doing karate,’ he says, but he now has Parkinson’s disease and endured a stroke 18 months ago, meaning he can no longer walk. And if there’s one thing that’s increasingly causing him problems, it’s Lime bikes.

These are the electric bikes, with a distinctive green metal basket at the front, that have become increasingly ubiquitous in London, as well as Nottingham, Milton Keynes, and – as of last month – Oxford.

Since they don’t need to be dropped off at fixed bays after use, riders have taken to dumping them wherever they find most convenient. And that causes problems for people like Mr Lacatus.

‘Sometimes they leave them on the drop kerb,’ he says, indicating where the pavement slopes down to a pedestrian crossing. ‘And this is very, very difficult for me or anyone in a wheelchair or mobility scooter.’

The drop kerb is the only point at which he can cross the road and an e-bike left there represents an impassable barrier.

The only solution for Mr Lacatus is to ask a passer-by to move it for him. ‘Because I’ve got Parkinson’s and dystonia – it’s a quite complicated medical situation – I can get upset quite easily. It’s bad enough that I can’t cross the road, but it makes me very angry when I cannot do things and I need to ask somebody to help me.

‘It makes me angry with myself because I see my lack of strength and my lack of power – having to rely on someone else. It frustrates me a lot. And this causes more cramps and makes my medical condition worse.’

Mr Lacatus is not the only one angry with the American bike company, which arrived in London in 2019, promising – in typical Silicon Valley language – ‘to build a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free’.

To its fans, Lime has made all sorts of trips quicker and more convenient. I have used them myself, often finding them faster – if more expensive – than jumping on a bus or the Tube. At 29p a minute, plus a £1 unlocking fee, even a 15-minute journey costs more than £5.

To its critics, however, Lime is a menace, causing thousands of its heavy e-bikes (they weigh 32kg) to be dumped across the capital, transforming thoroughfares into an obstacle course.

They may not be as dangerous as the so-called ‘fat bikes’, the illegal souped-up e-bikes used by some delivery drivers but they can still scare many vulnerable pedestrians. Moreover, Lime’s promises about improving the environment and boasts about taking cars off the road are wildly exaggerated, critics say.

Last month, Brent Council – the borough in which Mr Lacatus resides – said it had had enough. It told the company it had until the end of this month to clean up its act, otherwise it will ban the bikes from its borough.

Lime, which operates in 34 different countries, is not the only e-bike hire scheme in the UK. Its rivals include Forest, headquartered in London, and Tier, a German company.

But Lime, backed by Uber and Google, is the biggest by far. It does not reveal how many it has but it would appear that its fleet is rapidly expanding.

Between 2019 and 2023, 12million trips were taken on its bikes in the UK. But that figure was almost matched in just the first nine months of this year when 11.5million ‘commuting trips’ were taken.

Lime also boasts that, in the 17 London boroughs in which it operates, 97 per cent of people are never more than two minutes away from a Lime bike – which means there is an astonishing number of these vehicles scattered around the capital.

This growth has made it very rich. Lime’s chief executive, Wayne Ting, says that last year the company’s ‘global profitability neared $100million [£74.5million].’

Anyone who has downloaded an app onto their smartphone can rent one by using their phone’s camera to scan a QR code on the vehicle, whizz across town and leave it for the next person to pick up.

In some areas of London, notably parts of Westminster and the City, you have to park in designated areas that are indicated on the app’s map. If you leave the bike outside of these zones, you could be fined £2, £5 or £10.

In most areas, however, the company operates ‘free-floating’ parking. That means you can park it on the pavement or the road. You then have to take a picture on your phone so that – in theory – Lime can check you have parked responsibly. If not, they can fine you.

But how often does Lime punish its customers for poor parking? According to the company, 95 per cent of its journeys end where they are supposed to, ‘either in a dedicated parking bay or neatly to one side of the pavement,’ says Hal Stevenson, senior public affairs manager for Lime in the UK.

The remaining 5 per cent are either given a warning, a fine or – as I have discovered – let off. A few months ago, I was told I would be fined £10 for parking in Soho outside of a dedicated zone.

I was running late for a meeting, so I abandoned the bike, unable to lock it. When I examined the receipt later it said: ‘We noticed that you had trouble ending this ride. As a courtesy, we’ve only billed you for the time you rode.’ Not just no fine; I was given a refund.

Stevenson nevertheless insists: ‘We issue thousands of fines every week, because of the volume of journeys.’

It’s not just the customers who frequently get away without any penalty. Neither the local authorities nor Transport for London has the power to fine the company. Many critics say this is why it can get away with behaving so poorly.

Rachel Blake, MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, is campaigning for stricter regulations for e-bikes. She specifically wants local authorities to be given the power to fine both users and the companies themselves.

‘The fines are not enough for bad parking. Some people just bake a fine into their journey and pay the £10,’ she says, adding: ‘Bad parking has consequences for others, be it wheelchair users, parents pushing buggies, people with mobility issues or other people trying to park.’

This is true. In Hampstead, north London, I come across Babs Appleberg, 87, who has just come from an appointment at the Royal Free Hospital. She was with her daughter, who was trying to park their car but the space was blocked by two Lime bikes that had been left there.

To make matters worse, when Babs finally got out of the car, using a walking stick, there was a broken Lime bike sprawled on the pavement blocking her way.

‘It isn’t fair. They’ve taken a space away from cars. And I often find them dumped like this,’ she says pointing at the fallen vehicle at her feet. ‘Frankly, it makes me very nervous going out.’

This is a sentiment I hear time and again from people. Tesfai Berhane, 69, has been totally blind for 40 years. He uses a long cane and also has a guide dog, Dexter, a labradoodle, who helps him navigate his neighbourhood in Lambeth, south London.

‘I’ve been walking around these streets for 30 years. I know clearly all the pavements, the obstacles, and they were free and safe. Now, there are these unexpected bikes. And sometimes it is really bad – I can not turn left or right. It makes me nervous.’

He says he has fallen multiple times because of the bikes. ‘The last time this happened was April. I was coming from the chemist and I fell on top of the bike, and the medicine I had picked up smashed. A man came to help me, and he was the one that told me I’d fallen over a bike – I didn’t know what it was.’

Ting, Lime’s boss, has insisted that abandoned Lime bikes are not the problem. ‘People complain to me on social media that an e-bike is blocking their street, but right behind that bike is hundreds of cars taking up a lot more space,’ he said last year.

Mr Berhane thinks this is nonsense: ‘Cars may be everywhere, but they are not left on the pavement.’ This is why Lime rubs many people up the wrong way – even customers, like me, who think their bikes are useful.

Ting and his Silicon Valley backers are so evangelical about reducing Brits’ reliance on the car, they are prepared to create a nuisance in pursuit of their aim.

Last year, it commissioned a report which claimed that between 2019 and 2023, over 2.6million fewer motor vehicle kilometres (1.62million miles) were travelled in London ‘thanks to Lime’ and that it was responsible for eliminating 370 tonnes of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.

Camden Disability Action (CDA), a north London pressure group, was so sceptical of these figures that it investigated them. One member, Jill Huntesmith, says: ‘It’s just not true’, pointing out that the ‘fewer motor miles’ included lots of Lime bike customers who would otherwise have taken a taxi or minicab, vehicles that would still be pumping out pollution and carbon.

Also, it did not include Lime’s own vans, which are needed to replace the bikes’ batteries and ferry the bikes around the city – from one area where there are too many to a place where they are needed.

Lime employs 250 people to perform this task, and most of whom work out of a van. ‘At the moment we operate a mixed fleet,’ says Stevenson, admitting some of the vans are diesel or petrol-powered. ‘But we are targeting a fully electric fleet by next year.’

Considering the average journey is just 1.6 miles, it is likely the vast majority of Lime bike journeys have replaced a walk or a bus or Tube journey, rather than a car trip.

A serious concern is that many teenagers are tempted to ‘hack’ the bikes – joyriding them without paying and riding recklessly. You can tell when they’ve done this by the distinctive clickety-clack noise the bikes make when they are ridden without being unlocked.

Lime says they have recently fixed this issue and hacked rides have fallen from about 4 per cent of all journeys to less than 1 per cent.

But in Brent I met Daniel, aged 15, wearing his school uniform and looking like a model citizen – he even has a ‘prefect’ badge on his jacket. He tells me that you can easily find bikes where the lock is broken. ‘We just ride them about.’ He says his friends do it too. How many of them? ‘All of them,’ he smiles. Again, you can tell when someone has done this by the beeping sound the bike makes.

Almost as bad as the teenage joyriders are those customers who seem oblivious as to the basic rules of the road. By law, the motor of an e-bike can only assist the cyclist up to the speed of 15mph, but thanks to the sheer weight of the bike they can often go far faster when going downhill or if the rider is cycling fast.

MP Rachel Blake says: ‘Some people just feel quite fearful of the speed of e-bikes, especially when they are driven on the pavements. If you combine the potential speed, bulk and size you create an additional danger for pedestrians.’

Most Londoners I speak to do not want the bikes banned; but all are desperate for Lime to spend some of its vast fortune building dedicated parking bays and actually enforcing its own rules.

As Mr Lacatus says: ‘I remember when I drove, a long time ago, I once parked on a drop kerb and I had my car towed away and I had to pay £360. Why don’t they do that with the bikes?’

Why not indeed?