London e-bike boom leads to clashes with councils

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London has seen a surge in rented e-bikes this summer as private operators such as Lime and Forest expand their role in the city’s public transport network.

But the growing density of e-bikes on London’s streets has put operators on a crash course with Transport for London and local councils, which have complained about badly parked vehicles and the increasing fleet size.

The expanded coverage of e-bike schemes to London’s outer boroughs, along with improvements in cycling infrastructure, has helped shift the user base from wandering tourists to hurried commuters.

Charity CoMoUK reported in March 2024 that there were 37,694 rental e-bikes on the streets of London, compared with 27,694 in 2023.

Lime said it had seen 91 per cent growth to almost 11.5mn trips during peak commuting hours in London so far this year, from 6mn in the first three quarters of 2023.

Total monthly trips on Forest bikes have grown to more than 1mn in August, up over 200 per cent compared with the same month last year. The company said that 60 per cent of their riders are taking two trips a day. 

Wayne Ting, chief executive of San Francisco-based Lime, said London had become a template for the company’s business strategy in other cities. “If you ask Londoners, they see Lime as critical transportation infrastructure.” 

Lime operates in 230 cities including Manchester, San Francisco and Tel Aviv and has raised $1.56bn from investors including Uber and the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund since it was founded in 2017.

Forest, which was founded in London in 2019, raised $17mn in a Series A funding round last year. It claims to be breaking even and has announced plans to expand into continental Europe.

Rental e-bikes and scooters were initially considered a novelty product geared towards sightseers and casual users. But despite massive venture capital investment, many start-ups have struggled to get a foothold. Electric scooter rental company Bird, once seen as a leader in the crowded “micromobility” market, filed for bankruptcy last year.

London, however, has emerged as a viable city for e-bike operators. “They’ve become part of the transport fabric of London like black cabs and double decker buses,” said Matthew Clark, head of new mobility at Steer, a business consultancy that has worked with both private operators and TfL.

Riders are frequently turning to Lime and Forest for “first and last mile” journeys — trips to and from tube and train stations. Just under half of Londoners aged 18 to 34 hired an e-bike at least once a week, according to a survey conducted by Opinium for Lime in April. Pricing for e-bike rides varies, but Hackney council states that the average journey on a Lime bike in the borough costs between £3.50 and £4.50.

The strong uptake in shared e-bikes has led to frustration for London’s local authorities, particularly on the topic of bike parking.

Westminster city councillor Paul Dimoldenberg told the Financial Times that while there had been an agreement with Lime to allow a maximum of 2,000 e-bikes to operate within the borough, it was frequently letting in 3,000 e-bikes a day. 

“Bikes are parked in the most amazingly stupid places,” Dimoldenberg said. He added that while Lime issued fines to users who parked bikes inappropriately, the fines were pocketed by Lime itself rather than being passed on to the council.

Lime told the FT that although users may bring bikes into Westminster due to the popularity of the borough, the company does not actively deploy more than 2,000 e-bikes in the area. It confirmed that its agreement with Westminster allowed Lime to keep revenue from bike parking fines.

Tensions with councils have been on the rise. Earlier this month Brent council alerted Lime that it would begin removing bikes unless the company addressed the “havoc” it caused.

Other local authorities, including Camden Council, have raised the issue of “hacked” e-bikes being used without being paid for. Ting said Lime had addressed the problem of hijacked vehicles last year with “a fix to our hardware that solved the stolen trips issue”.

Rachel Blake, MP for Cities of London and Westminster, has called on the government to give new powers to local authorities to oversee bike and scooter hire.

TfL has also signalled that it is considering London-wide regulation to harmonise the fragmented agreements with councils. 

TfL told the FT that it was “explor[ing] a co-ordinated scheme to manage dockless e-bikes and e-scooters, and additional enforcement mechanisms for poorly parked e-bikes”.

Both Lime and Forest noted that they were working closely with TfL but remained concerned that a tightening of rules for e-bike rental, such as mandatory parking bays, would reduce active travel in the city.

TfL also recently announced it would be adding 2,000 e-bikes to its Santander shared cycle scheme. However, the Santander cycle programme, which is limited to central London, has struggled to compete with the dockless, well-funded private operators.

Additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw