Council continues to take action on Lime bikes blocking pavements

In its ongoing commitment to ensuring that e-bike firms in the borough operate in a responsible way, last week the council seized 42 Lime Bikes across the borough. This follows a similar initiative carried out last year where the company’s hire bikes were impounded for obstructing walkways across the borough.

Last autumn Wandsworth Council announced its first steps in formalising agreements with e-bike operators which will see the council work with them on best practice in the borough. This is in addition to implementing dedicating parking bays where e-bikes can be left and picked up for users and therefore reducing instances of pavement blockages.

In the meantime however, e-bikes continue to block pavements and walkways across the borough each day and so action will continue to be taken where obstructive e-bikes block pavements and cause serious obstructions for residents, and make journeys more difficult for people with disabilities, wheelchair users and people with buggies.

This issue was previously raised with the company by Wandsworth Council Leader Simon Hogg, who wrote to the CEO of Lime Bikes at the end of last year drawing attention to these problems - but insufficient action has been taken by the company to resolve the issue.

Councillor Hogg said: “E-bikes are a convenient and sustainable way to travel around our borough – we want Lime and all other E-bike operators to work with the council to create a safe and fair system.

“Wandsworth Council will continue to take firm action on Lime Bikes that are parked inconsiderately. The number of bikes seized last week shows how serious a problem this is.

“We receive daily complaints about Lime Bikes blocking pavements, and when I raised this with the company last year they said they would be taking steps to solve this problem.

“Unfortunately the actions they have taken have not ensured sustained improvements in the situation and removing Lime Bikes obstructing pavements continues to be necessary.

“We hope that our latest action spells out our determination to tackle this issue and sends another strong message to the bosses at Lime Bikes that they need to do more to keep Wandsworth’s pavements clear.”