Stepping out of Wembley Park tube station, it’s hard not to be dazzled by the flashy skyscrapers and the looming stadium covered in colourful adverts. If it weren’t for the B&M in the sights, you could mistake this north-west London neighbourhood for a bustling Tokyo or Seoul neighbourhood.
But as you descend the station steps, reality quickly sets in. Lime e-bikes, which you can rent via an app and which have become ubiquitous in the capital in recent years, are scattered everywhere. Some are parked upright, but just as many are on their sides.
That may not be long now. On October 31, Brent could become the first council in the UK to ban the green two-wheelers.
“Look! That’s what we’re talking about,” says Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt, pointing to a cluster of Lime e-bikes dotted around the station.
He has drawn up a list of demands that the company must agree to before a potential Halloween ban is implemented. These include the introduction of designated parking spaces, means to remove incorrectly parked or abandoned bikes, and higher fines for users who do not leave their e-bikes in the correct location.
Butt isn’t the only one frustrated with the company. The San Francisco-based company operates in more than 230 cities around the world. In London, an estimated 30,000 rental bikes are on the city’s streets. Lime owns and operates most of them.
A number of councils have already made designated borough parking mandatory for e-bikes, following complaints that they were being left on pavements and roads. Disabled and partially sighted charities have said the bikes are making London’s pavements less accessible.
The poor relations between Lime and local authorities have even led to police involvement. Last year, Met officers were called to a lock-up in Hammersmith and Fulham after Lime hired contractors to recover bikes seized by the council. Council leader Stephen Cowan later clarified that the matters had been “resolved”.
In the middle of rush hour on Willesden Green, a leafy shopping street lined with Middle Eastern restaurants and chic coffee shops, the news that the lime green bicycles would soon disappear from the neighbourhood was greeted with joy by some.
“I want them picked up and crushed,” said Pat, who declined to give her last name. The 86-year-old, who uses a cane, often has to dodge e-bikes strewn across the sidewalk. “Life is bad enough when you get older and you’re not as steady on your feet when these bikes aren’t in your way. It’s good to be rid of them.”
Heidi, 52, the manager of Daisy Chain Florist, which is just outside the metro station, said she carted away about 15 of the 32kg bikes – about the weight of a cheap tumble dryer – from her shop each month. “People just dump them without any consideration. People don’t think about others,” she said.
Even those who use the bikes want them less on the pavement. Jude Umolu, 43, rides a Lime e-bike to and from his house to the metro station in the morning. He supports designated parking for the bikes. “It’s convenient to have them on the pavement, but it’s a health and safety issue. In the morning, they’re pretty much everywhere.”
While he doesn’t want them banned, Umolu said he would walk to the station again if they were banned from the area. “I’ve managed without them in the past,” he said.
For some, the bikes have become more than just an annoyance. Robert Goodsell, 74, says he often sees children hurtling dangerously across sidewalks and roads on hacked e-bikes. Tutorials on how to crack them are easy to find online. Once hacked, the bikes emit a Dalek-like alarm sound, keeping residents awake into the early hours. To avoid getting stuck, they must be ridden at high speed.
In July, Goodsell’s 77-year-old wife was struck by a car as she left her home. In a video seen by the Guardian, she is struck and thrown into a hedge by a teenager hurtling down a sidewalk on a Lime e-bike.
Fortunately, her injuries were not serious. “If she had been two inches further down the road when she was hit, the consequences could have been much more serious,” he said. “The hacked bikes are a danger to those riding them, pedestrians and other road users. Someone is going to die.” Lime says hacked bikes account for 5% of rides, but 40% of complaints.
Goodsell said his neighbors, some of whom are elderly or disabled, were unable to leave their homes after the bikes were parked right outside their doors.
While he would like to see tougher measures against the hacked e-bikes, he is generally in favor of the bikes if they are regulated. “I believe these micromobility schemes are the future. If Lime and Brent can join forces, that would be fantastic,” he said.
Related: Who Owns Lime Anyway? How Green E-Bikes Took Over Our Streets
Other councils have taken Lime under control, including through the implementation of designated parking areas. Butt says Lime is treating London suburbs like Brent as “second-class citizens”. Lime has said it is prepared to provide data and funding to set up parking areas.
Butt is also demanding that the fines Lime charges users who leave their bikes in unsafe places be paid to the council. He wants the current £10 fine in the app to be increased to rival the £130 fine motorists get for parking in the wrong place, to create a greater deterrent.
Currently, councils cannot issue fines to e-bikers using car-sharing schemes. Rachel Blake, MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, is lobbying the government to change this. She said: “We need to give local authorities the power to fine people who park badly and fine businesses.”
Brent Council has had to cut £210 million from its budget over the past 14 years. “We don’t have the resources, the funding, the staff. The amount of dumping that’s happening in our parks, our streams and our rivers. Our staff need to be out there picking it up,” Butt said. “We’re not here to do Lime’s job.”
Butt said Lime wanted to double the number of bikes in the neighborhood from 750 to 1,500, but he said the neighborhood had had enough. “People have gotten fed up with Lime.”
A Lime spokesperson said: “We’re proud to have worked with our partner councils over the past six years to establish a safe and reliable shared e-bike service across London. Local people in Brent and across the capital use our bikes every day for essential journeys, with 11.5 million commuter journeys made this year.
“We recognise that a small proportion of e-bikes block pavements and busy junctions, causing problems for people with access issues, and we understand how important it is to keep our pavements safe for everyone. We regularly gather feedback from visual impairment charities to help us improve our operations.
“To enforce mandatory parking regulations in Brent, we first need the council to build a functional network of parking locations. We can provide data and funding to support this process and gather regular feedback from Sight Loss Councils and other charities on our Disability Advisory Board to continually improve our work.
“We want to work with the council to address these concerns. Banning cycling helps no one as we work towards our ambitious active travel and climate goals.”