Lime is in a transitional phase in Islington

ELECTRIC bike companies told how they are tackling cyclists’ obstructive parking and dangerous road behaviour in a grilling at the Town Hall on Tuesday.

The Tribune receives almost weekly letters from residents complaining about packed bike parking bays outside their homes and pavements blocked by abandoned two-wheelers, and this week they had the chance to share frustrations with Lime and Forest, the companies that put the bikes on our streets.

Councillors asked what they were doing to stop obstructive parking, why some parking bays are overfilled with bikes by staff, and what can be done to prevent fast, dangerous cycling.

Lime’s Jack McKenna said the scale of its operations has grown “exponentially” since he last reported to the Town Hall, when parking issues were councillors’ and constituents’ primary concern.

Lime’s response has been to work with the council to build designated parking bays and increase the number of staff on hand to move bikes in Islington, where there are now up to 30 staff moving up to 4,000 bikes in the borough every day.

“We are essentially delivering a mass transit service, while we’re building the infrastructure live in real time, so there are real challenges,” Mr McKenna said.

Lime is in a transitional phase in Islington, moving from a model of parking anywhere to the mandatory bay parking that it operates in other boroughs.

Mr McKenna described this transition as being like “if there was a bus going through the borough and in some places you could just flag down the driver and hop on and off anywhere, and in some places you have to wait at the bus stop”.

While the company has staff stationed at known hotspots like Finsbury Park tube station or around Arsenal on match days, he explained they rely on individual reports to find and remove rogue wrongly parked e-bikes.

Mr McKenna gave councillors his details and said: “If one of your residents reports a bike or if you see a bike and if you send it to me, I can assure you that as long as I’m not on holiday, that will be actioned very quickly and the nearest person in the borough will be sent there and I will personally make sure that person receives a fine or a ban.

“We fully appreciate the frustrations. I spend my working and non-working life speaking to people about them and we’re committed to doing better.”

In the last year, Islington Council has built 200 e-bike parking bays – by next year it will be 250.

Mr McKenna told that Lime has invested £5million in parking infrastructure across London.

Lime and Forest, represented by Alex Berwin, also told of their funding contributions to local cycling schemes.