London Cycle Hire

I'm seeing a lot of Ofo bikes that have been nicked. A reasonable number with a shit respray, others just ridden as are.

Bikeshare in London, now. Yellow = Ofo, orange = Mobike, blue =
Santander Cycles. Essentially the Ofo/Mobikes have (a) profitable core
competing directly w/ San. Cycles, (b) slight extensions N, W & SE -
places San. Cycles should expand to. Rest of London = bikeshare
desert.

https://twitter.com/oobr/status/1056902017065594881

Live in Glasgow and the next bike scheme is not quite dockless, you have to leave it at a stand but the locks are low quality combination cord things. In the 3-4 years they've been here I've seen very very few that have been vandalised or hijacked. It's been a slow methodical roll out with lots of community engagement, maybe that's a large part of why it's been more successful? (I won't say super successful, you don't see them getting used a huge amount, I stopped using them two years ago when was nearly ended by a wheel falling off one, accidents happen, but the company then tried to charge me for not parking it properly did not score well with me.

I've seen very very few that have been vandalised or hijacked.

Come East Bricky, I'll show you things.

The new ones seem to be more secure, when it was just the combi locks you could go a 5 minute walk from the velodrome and find about a dozen in gardens, abandoned against walls, in various states of being stripped etc.

Shows I spend most of my time in city and West.
Read a few articles some current some years old and all saying similar stuff that the UK is the absolute worst for people abusing and destroying public / communal property.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/dockless-electric-bike-scheme-arrives-in-london-a4010041.html

They're pushing hard to eat everyone else up. Look at their careers page; Hiring in the Hundreds. They seemed to be everywhere in Madrid

How does a dockless ebike get charged?

My guess would be that they collect the bikes and charge them at their depot. They probably have a 'smart' unit that reports the status of the charge.

Each model has a 62-mile range and airless tyres to prevent punctures, with bike batteries monitored remotely and swapped when charge is low.

With average journey <2miles that gives them a week or so between charges. They probably have a van carrying charged up batteries to swap when necessary.

Hot swapping seems to be the to-go techique.

There's a similar method run in China with scooters, whereby the user simply stops at random battery charging docks, scans their ID, and out pops a freshly charged battery to be swapped with your dead one. Done.

Battery unplugs so someone drives/rides around swapping battery packs all day long.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/22/life-cycle-is-it-the-end-for-britains-dockless-bike-schemes

Does anyone know the best way to report mobikes that are blocking a route that doesn't involve downloading their app or social media? There's been a whole load of them placed on Bream's Buildings in front of the bank bikes making it pissing annoying to get through, especially if there's people also travelling the other direction and it's an areseache navigating off chancery lane, through the bollards and then into the mass of unused bikes.

Report them to the council?

Any recommendations for somewhere in North London to hire a road bike? I want to hire one for my wife for the weekend. onyerbike seems recommended elsewhere but it's south/ central

This is interesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jun/03/lime-e-bike-company-wont-pay-for-900-damage-to-my-car

So who's really liable? The company that uses the public realm to place its product for people to use, or the users?

Sounds interesting so without proof of the damage taking place(witness/cctv/whatever) does this make all carpark damage just the nearest car/bike when you get back to the car?

Also if you do damage to a car just plonk a dockless hire bike near and say it was that?

I don't know the answer. :)

I doubt that existing legislation can help with it. We have companies placing their property in the public realm with the permission of councils, which have powers to deal with street clutter like tables and chairs or A-boards advertising businesses (and I assume the same powers apply to hire bikes, which are mobile like other items placed on the public highway).

People turn up and start to use the items, then stop using them. Whose responsibility are they in between being used by people? Obviously, were someone else to come along and blatantly knock one of the bikes against a car, they would be responsible, but if the bikes are parked badly? Is it negligence by the previous user if they fall over, or is the company to blame for not making them sufficiently stable when propped up? What counts as a standard of stability?

I think it's all a bit untested and we probably need legislation generally about the use of the public realm for these overtly 'environmental' (getting more trips to be made by bike/e-bike) and covertly commercial (data harvesting) purposes.

Using the public realm in this way hasn't historically been possible for private companies--they've had to pay for advertising space, go through lengthy processes to have advertising sites established, etc., so now to be able to profit from it with the minimal investment (we are, of course, talking about large companies backed by massive investment) of a couple of thousand bikes, is very convenient for them.

So here's what appears to be the next move to tackle the issues presented by private hire bikes:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/hire-firms-may-face-500-fines-over-dumped-bikes-in-london-a4191871.html

The new proposal, drawn up under a 1972 law to “suppress nuisance”, is being circulated around every council in the capital for approval before going back before London Councils’ transport committee in October.

If approved, each area would be able to decide on appropriate parking zones, or to opt out and provide no parking.

Could anything legally be done if they advised users to park them in the road "like a car/motorbike"?

No idea. I suspect that they're going for bylaws means that there's no existing 'proper' legislation.

Here's another dumping battleground:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/21/cycle-hire-firms-urged-to-help-clear-dumped-bikes-from-canals

Great as it seems to blame operators the people ending journeys on the towpaths and along the canal are surely boaters themselves? Also is the "someone" who will chuck bikes in the water also boaters? It's something I've never really understood about the canal trust that when it suits them cyclists are evil but when you look at canal boats most if not all have a couple of bikes on them.

They seem to be more upset that they can't charge them for the recovery of bikes(when it suits them to recover them). Surely if they pull a bike from the canal then dump it out on any road and shoot them a message they would collect it. It's also really open to abuse if they are taking "abandoned" bikes from the tow path and collecting them for a fee, the moment you pay people to recover dockless bikes they can easily find 100s a day and claim they pulled them all from canals.

Great as it seems to blame operators the people ending journeys on the towpaths and along the canal are surely boaters themselves?

I doubt that any boaters would throw bikes into the canal, and I have no doubt that they wouldn't park them on the towpath, given the very obvious risk that someone may opportunistically chuck them in.

Also is the "someone" who will chuck bikes in the water also boaters? It's something I've never really understood about the canal trust that when it suits them cyclists are evil but when you look at canal boats most if not all have a couple of bikes on them.

The C&RT certainly doesn't think cyclists are 'evil'. Having done a bit of work with them in the past, they have always considered the presence of cycling on the towpaths a good thing. It brings life to them and many people enjoy riding along there. The C&RT has in the past done a lot of good work in facilitating cycling on towpaths and run progressively better awareness campaigns to deal with the fast and reckless, or just plain unaware, riders. If you watch the towpath for any length of time you will see someone not riding in their or anyone else's interests, and they stink up the mood for everyone else. It's actually mostly been the canal user groups who have been most vociferous in their opposition to cycling, and the C&RT has been its defender.

They seem to be more upset that they can't charge them for the recovery of bikes(when it suits them to recover them).

I don't understand 'when it suits them to recover them'. Obviously, it will always 'suit' the C&RT to recover bikes, although they would rather avoid doing this work for obvious reasons.

As he says, his main requests are to ask people not to park bikes near water and/or to lock them to something, to prevent the problem being caused in the first instance.

Surely if they pull a bike from the canal then dump it out on any road and shoot them a message they would collect it.

Why would the C&RT 'dump' a recovered bike somewhere when that would obviously clutter the street somewhere and/or make it possible that someone might just chuck it back into the canal? It would be irresponsible, and quite possibly against their long-established rules for dealing with waste recovered from the waterways. It's also probably a fair assumption that most recovered bikes are damaged in some way, e.g. the buckled front wheel in the article, and dumping them somewhere wouldn't be very helpful, even were the operator's people then to come along to pick them up. They'd still be cluttering the street in the meantime.

It's also really open to abuse if they are taking "abandoned" bikes from the tow path and collecting them for a fee, the moment you pay people to recover dockless bikes they can easily find 100s a day and claim they pulled them all from canals.

The point he makes is simply that he would like the C&RT only to have an arrangement with the hire firms. It is, after all, providing a service to them--and, needless to say, the C&RT would not abuse such an arrangement. Obviously, he's not suggesting that any person should be able to claim payment for recovering a bike.