London Cycle Hire

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.