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‘I want them all crushed’: the council poised to ban ‘dangerous’ Lime bikes
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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They keep conflating public disorder issues with Lime Biker issues and all for what? To further empower cars?
This isn't a problem with bikes that individuals own. This isn't a problem with the Santander bikes either. This is a specific problem with Lime bikes and the likes, because the Lime bike system is set up to encourage people to dump their bikes anywhere and Lime does nothing to discourage this. Lime is a multi-million pound private enterprise that is profiting on what is effectively the littering of our public spaces.
Personally I'd favour using punitive market-based mechanisms to solve this - fine Lime £100 or £200 for every mis-parked bike, which would align their incentives with society's and quickly lead them to being a lot more discerning about who they rent their bikes out to and how they enforce against misuse of the bikes. But I suspect this would destroy their business model anyway - the overwhelming majority of Lime bikes I see out and about are not parked in an orderly way, so what you're calling a public disorder problem must account for the vast majority of their customer base - it's a business model set up to cater to hooligans. So maybe just banning the product outright is the better option. The Santander bikes are very widely available for anyone who needs them and they operate with a system that overwhelmingly enforces orderly parking.
But most people aren't littering the bikes. What you get is a bunch of people attempting to hack the bikes and they leave them anywhere, along with drunk and disorderly people that kick them over. Why are you punishing all the people that leave them properly parked?
It reminds me of how taxi drivers kept objecting to Uber.
Yes, we need more parking bays and that's on local councils to provide, but leaving them anywhere helps everyone. I've never seen a Santander bay South of the river for example.
Punish the bad actors. London has more CCTV than any other city in the world. Put it to good use.
Leaving them anywhere is the whole problem. My neighbour is in his 70s and uses a mobility scooter. I see parents having to detour their pushchairs onto the road to get around them. People are literally leaving these bikes lying horizontal across the pavement!
That's clearly not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to the ability to leave them parked on any road. You're once again conflating that with bad actors.
When you get off of a Lime Bike the app requires you to take a picture of how you parked it. The ability to find bikes local to people even where there are no docks/bays increases public health and transport links.
If bikes are found flat on the pavement or blocking the pavement, that's a public disorder problem, not a Lime Bike problem and should be tackled as such.