One can only wish. But I can’t see that happening with labour’s turtle speed when it comes to cycle superhighways or cycle paths in general.
You’d need considerably more than £20m to sort out London’s topography and make it as level as Amsterdam.
I’ve not been to Amsterdam, but I have been to Copenhagen, the other ‘cycling capital of the world’. Mass cycling works there. You know why? Because Copenhagen’s cyclists are ordered, law abiding, and stick to a strict set of conventions. Tourists are actually discouraged from cycling there until they learn the proper customs of being a cyclist in Copenhagen.
London cannot be a cycling city until our cyclists stop being hoards of lawless, red-light-jumping morons.
Regardless of how you feel about lime bikes themselves (yes, the bad parking and behaviour annoys me too), more cycle infrastructure can only be a good thing.
For one, giving cyclists their own space helps reduce the amount of time they spend in conflict with other road users, and making cycling more normal will hopefully lead to better standards of cycling.
After all, most people manage to drive, even those of above average stupidity, so there’s hope yet for the cyclists who ride on the pavement, cannot see colour, etc.
Lime obviously want to sell themselves. We do not have the same cycling culture in London as in Amsterdam. The infrastructure there for cycles is massive. In Greenwich Borough, the new cycle lanes built alongside the roads are hardly used . Sure people do cycle to work everyday in London. But Lime is just a hop on / hop off – and leave abandoned afterwards.
The Dutch know how to park a bike safely
I like cycling but lime bikes do clutter up places. It’s a pity though that people don’t use bikes to pop down to the shops in my london suburb.
I have a visual impairment and mobility issues. I fucking bet you can fucking guess what I think of the fucking Lime Bikes.
I’ve had my fill of Lime honestly. Not a fan of their model and 20m is nothing for a city the size of London.
Drivers don’t respect cyclists and neither respect pedestrians. Only a few weeks ago I almost got hit by a lady running a red light on her phone whilst cycling a Lime bike.
Maybe The City (capital-C) can, but can Kensington & Chelsea?
On transport policy, we aren’t one City — we’re 32(+2) cities in a trenchcoat. Any borough council can block improvements in their area and flat-out refuse to provide the infrastructure we need to “be another Amsterdam”.
There’s a reason the built environment in RBKC is so hostile to cyclists. And it isn’t just RBKC who still think like this.
More than just bike lines.
Bikes on the tube?
Bikes on the Bus?
Secure bike storage at tube stations
Secure bike storage at every employer
Shower facilities at employer
Secure bike storage at home
Anyone living north / south of the Thames but works south/north of the river in the East is pretty screwed.
Lime bikes are so expensive. Need to ban them all and get a larger fleet of TFL electric bikes that are priced more fairly.
Finally coughing up 5 million they should have paid the boroughs already and spending the rest on bikes and AI for some reason is not investing 20 million in London
29,643 killed or seriously injured by drivers a year in the UK.
The UK needs to change.
That’s just collisions. Thousands are also killed by the pollution drivers create.
Cool! We don’t have Lime bikes in Amsterdam sooo…
Spend the £20m clearing the bikes up from footpaths, garages, parks, rivers…
Seems like the poorly maintained bikes may take care of the lousy cyclists problem eventually.
I both support more cycling and less Lime bikes.
I don’t know what it is. Does a culture of ownership change things? If you owned your bike would you take better care how you ride it, where you leave it, etc?
The biggest issue with bike owners is running red lights. The biggest issue with Lime users is running red lights, riding on the pavement, parking them wherever they want, etc
Minority comment – I love Lime bikes, use them all the time, and hope they are never banned.
For that you’d need to do a u-turn on English culture.
Perhaps I’m being pedantic but I think London should be trying to emulate Rotterdam rather than Amsterdam, much more modern infrastructure & better integration with pedestrians
More cycling is good. More lime bikes not so much given how people just abandon them.
We should be making lots of secure bike storage at bus and rail stations like the dutch do and encourage actual bike ownership in London whilst seriously increasing the bike lanes.
“Lime says this new announcement is the company’s *“biggest investment in parking improvements and safety in a city globally to date”.* It lays down a gauntlet to London’s councils and Transport for London.
“But it remains to be seen whether they pick it up quickly enough. Most dockless parking bays have to come from one obvious place: repurposing car parking bays. Such bays clearly don’t generally belong on pavements.
“So let’s see how many boroughs leap at the opportunity to fund a shift away from private motor vehicle provision to shared active provision – and roll out dockless bays fast.
“And let’s see which boroughs, once again, don’t have the political will to face down drivers in order to deliver uncluttered pavements and a great active travel opportunity.”
Netherlands, sure. Amsterdam, no. Horrible the way they bike in Amsterdam. Want to see a city do biking properly, go to Copenhagen.
I only hate the way they are left everywhere and the few idiots that use them without caring where pedestrians are. That could be solved with better infrastructure and better education. More bikes on the whole is better for everyone.
I ended up getting my own ebike (a small folding one) after trying Lime one (1) time. Dont do Limes kids!
(jokes aside I know cycle 90% of my journeys and save so much money in the long run. I just wish for more safer cycle lanes that dont go through bus stops like the ones in my area)
Been away from London for almost a decade now. How have these new players affected the so-called Boris bike (Santander bikes) service? Did the space get more competitive?
He? The company…
I can understand why the chief of a bike rental company would say that.
I keep seeing people complaining about the lack of infrastructure without suggesting a way to fund it.
Road users pay for their laws and infrastructure through road tax, MOT, VAT on fuel etc.
Nothing will change without a funding model in place, and council budgets are tighter than ever
You mean actual infrastructure and not just paint on the roads?
Does the 20 million “invested” include any actual parking spaces or racks for the bikes? Or do people just continue to ditch them in the middle of the pavement.
Amsterdam is a nightmare, no thanks.
Yep. Solving the issue of cars and solving the issue of parking for lime bikes are two issues I’m happy to work on at the same time. Great stuff.
E-Bikes are good but Lime bikes for example cost way too much. Santander bikes are a hefty £3.30 for 30 minutes. Forest bikes are the most reasonable priced for rides below ten minutes.
But with prices well above tube fares, there is no incentive to use e-bikes over them. The Santander daily pass for manual pedal bikes seems like the most reasonably priced option for all day travel. But then what is the point in e-bikes?
People cite Amsterdam as a transport utopia due to its ‘shared spaces’ where cars, bikes, and pedestrians all coexist, but roads there will have up to 4 different lanes for cars, bikes, trams and pedestrians.
I decided to walk to the airport, which was only accessible on foot via a cycle path, the entirety of which was exclusively for cycles and, for most of the way, had no footpath in sight.
So what we’re really saying is it has a better cycling infrastructure, which London is slowly developing.
Are they opening some funny smelling coffeeshops?
Beep…beep….beep
What does he want us to do then? Throw all the lime bikes in the Thames and other canals?
I like the effortlessness of the voi scooters, would also like more of those expanded around the city.
Is he investing in cycling infrastructure or are lime bikes gonna sponsor soft drugs and brothels?
Amsterdam, and by extension The Netherlands, are culturally more inclined to cycle (which I’m envious of).
More people would be up for it here if it was safe and accessible, and that requires proper infrastructure, above all else.
Ffs give us the weed, forget the fucking bikes!
Amsterdam comparison, not even close to reality. Most private bike hires have been banned because problems. People who live in the city own their bikes for a low £’s instead of pay out ££’s to hire a bike to dump randomly as soon as they’re done because it’s not their own. CEO is making it up.
CEO Wayne Ting, does not give a shit about parking on pavements or any problems making money creates, based on the article, just wants public land handed over so the company can profit its shareholders. From the article:
Shown pictures taken by a Standard reader of Lime bikes parked on pavements in Greenwich, a world heritage site, he said: “I get sent pictures like this all of the time. Usually there is a row of parked cars, and there is one bike behind 200 cars. [I ask myself]: Why are you so angry about this one bike and not angry about the millions of cars parked on our streets every single day in London?”
Total deflection. won’t even acknowledge there’s a problem. Guess he also doesn’t want to talk about the shattered leg bones and operations that often result from a Lime bike fall, because they’re so ridiculously heavy. The operations to pin the legs are publicly funded, is Lime going to start paying for the extra load on the NHS, the operations, people loss of income?
There’s already a public bike hire scheme in London, just expand that.
Wait so the government banned electric scooters and are confiscating electric bikes …
47 comments
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One can only wish. But I can’t see that happening with labour’s turtle speed when it comes to cycle superhighways or cycle paths in general.
You’d need considerably more than £20m to sort out London’s topography and make it as level as Amsterdam.
I’ve not been to Amsterdam, but I have been to Copenhagen, the other ‘cycling capital of the world’. Mass cycling works there. You know why? Because Copenhagen’s cyclists are ordered, law abiding, and stick to a strict set of conventions. Tourists are actually discouraged from cycling there until they learn the proper customs of being a cyclist in Copenhagen.
London cannot be a cycling city until our cyclists stop being hoards of lawless, red-light-jumping morons.
Regardless of how you feel about lime bikes themselves (yes, the bad parking and behaviour annoys me too), more cycle infrastructure can only be a good thing.
For one, giving cyclists their own space helps reduce the amount of time they spend in conflict with other road users, and making cycling more normal will hopefully lead to better standards of cycling.
After all, most people manage to drive, even those of above average stupidity, so there’s hope yet for the cyclists who ride on the pavement, cannot see colour, etc.
Lime obviously want to sell themselves. We do not have the same cycling culture in London as in Amsterdam. The infrastructure there for cycles is massive. In Greenwich Borough, the new cycle lanes built alongside the roads are hardly used . Sure people do cycle to work everyday in London. But Lime is just a hop on / hop off – and leave abandoned afterwards.
The Dutch know how to park a bike safely
I like cycling but lime bikes do clutter up places. It’s a pity though that people don’t use bikes to pop down to the shops in my london suburb.
I have a visual impairment and mobility issues. I fucking bet you can fucking guess what I think of the fucking Lime Bikes.
I’ve had my fill of Lime honestly. Not a fan of their model and 20m is nothing for a city the size of London.
Drivers don’t respect cyclists and neither respect pedestrians. Only a few weeks ago I almost got hit by a lady running a red light on her phone whilst cycling a Lime bike.
Maybe The City (capital-C) can, but can Kensington & Chelsea?
On transport policy, we aren’t one City — we’re 32(+2) cities in a trenchcoat. Any borough council can block improvements in their area and flat-out refuse to provide the infrastructure we need to “be another Amsterdam”.
There’s a reason the built environment in RBKC is so hostile to cyclists. And it isn’t just RBKC who still think like this.
More than just bike lines.
Bikes on the tube?
Bikes on the Bus?
Secure bike storage at tube stations
Secure bike storage at every employer
Shower facilities at employer
Secure bike storage at home
Anyone living north / south of the Thames but works south/north of the river in the East is pretty screwed.
Lime bikes are so expensive. Need to ban them all and get a larger fleet of TFL electric bikes that are priced more fairly.
Finally coughing up 5 million they should have paid the boroughs already and spending the rest on bikes and AI for some reason is not investing 20 million in London
29,643 killed or seriously injured by drivers a year in the UK.
The UK needs to change.
That’s just collisions. Thousands are also killed by the pollution drivers create.
Cool! We don’t have Lime bikes in Amsterdam sooo…
Spend the £20m clearing the bikes up from footpaths, garages, parks, rivers…
Seems like the poorly maintained bikes may take care of the lousy cyclists problem eventually.
I both support more cycling and less Lime bikes.
I don’t know what it is. Does a culture of ownership change things? If you owned your bike would you take better care how you ride it, where you leave it, etc?
The biggest issue with bike owners is running red lights. The biggest issue with Lime users is running red lights, riding on the pavement, parking them wherever they want, etc
Minority comment – I love Lime bikes, use them all the time, and hope they are never banned.
For that you’d need to do a u-turn on English culture.
Perhaps I’m being pedantic but I think London should be trying to emulate Rotterdam rather than Amsterdam, much more modern infrastructure & better integration with pedestrians
More cycling is good. More lime bikes not so much given how people just abandon them.
We should be making lots of secure bike storage at bus and rail stations like the dutch do and encourage actual bike ownership in London whilst seriously increasing the bike lanes.
“Lime says this new announcement is the company’s *“biggest investment in parking improvements and safety in a city globally to date”.* It lays down a gauntlet to London’s councils and Transport for London.
“But it remains to be seen whether they pick it up quickly enough. Most dockless parking bays have to come from one obvious place: repurposing car parking bays. Such bays clearly don’t generally belong on pavements.
“So let’s see how many boroughs leap at the opportunity to fund a shift away from private motor vehicle provision to shared active provision – and roll out dockless bays fast.
“And let’s see which boroughs, once again, don’t have the political will to face down drivers in order to deliver uncluttered pavements and a great active travel opportunity.”
Full analysis from London Cycling Campaign [https://lcc.org.uk/news/lime-pledges-20-million-for-london/](https://lcc.org.uk/news/lime-pledges-20-million-for-london/)
Netherlands, sure. Amsterdam, no. Horrible the way they bike in Amsterdam. Want to see a city do biking properly, go to Copenhagen.
I only hate the way they are left everywhere and the few idiots that use them without caring where pedestrians are. That could be solved with better infrastructure and better education. More bikes on the whole is better for everyone.
I ended up getting my own ebike (a small folding one) after trying Lime one (1) time. Dont do Limes kids!
(jokes aside I know cycle 90% of my journeys and save so much money in the long run. I just wish for more safer cycle lanes that dont go through bus stops like the ones in my area)
Been away from London for almost a decade now. How have these new players affected the so-called Boris bike (Santander bikes) service? Did the space get more competitive?
He? The company…
I can understand why the chief of a bike rental company would say that.
I keep seeing people complaining about the lack of infrastructure without suggesting a way to fund it.
Road users pay for their laws and infrastructure through road tax, MOT, VAT on fuel etc.
Nothing will change without a funding model in place, and council budgets are tighter than ever
You mean actual infrastructure and not just paint on the roads?
Does the 20 million “invested” include any actual parking spaces or racks for the bikes? Or do people just continue to ditch them in the middle of the pavement.
Amsterdam is a nightmare, no thanks.
Yep. Solving the issue of cars and solving the issue of parking for lime bikes are two issues I’m happy to work on at the same time. Great stuff.
E-Bikes are good but Lime bikes for example cost way too much. Santander bikes are a hefty £3.30 for 30 minutes. Forest bikes are the most reasonable priced for rides below ten minutes.
But with prices well above tube fares, there is no incentive to use e-bikes over them. The Santander daily pass for manual pedal bikes seems like the most reasonably priced option for all day travel. But then what is the point in e-bikes?
People cite Amsterdam as a transport utopia due to its ‘shared spaces’ where cars, bikes, and pedestrians all coexist, but roads there will have up to 4 different lanes for cars, bikes, trams and pedestrians.
I decided to walk to the airport, which was only accessible on foot via a cycle path, the entirety of which was exclusively for cycles and, for most of the way, had no footpath in sight.
So what we’re really saying is it has a better cycling infrastructure, which London is slowly developing.
Are they opening some funny smelling coffeeshops?
Beep…beep….beep
What does he want us to do then? Throw all the lime bikes in the Thames and other canals?
I like the effortlessness of the voi scooters, would also like more of those expanded around the city.
Is he investing in cycling infrastructure or are lime bikes gonna sponsor soft drugs and brothels?
Amsterdam, and by extension The Netherlands, are culturally more inclined to cycle (which I’m envious of).
More people would be up for it here if it was safe and accessible, and that requires proper infrastructure, above all else.
Ffs give us the weed, forget the fucking bikes!
Amsterdam comparison, not even close to reality. Most private bike hires have been banned because problems. People who live in the city own their bikes for a low £’s instead of pay out ££’s to hire a bike to dump randomly as soon as they’re done because it’s not their own. CEO is making it up.
CEO Wayne Ting, does not give a shit about parking on pavements or any problems making money creates, based on the article, just wants public land handed over so the company can profit its shareholders. From the article:
Shown pictures taken by a Standard reader of Lime bikes parked on pavements in Greenwich, a world heritage site, he said: “I get sent pictures like this all of the time. Usually there is a row of parked cars, and there is one bike behind 200 cars. [I ask myself]: Why are you so angry about this one bike and not angry about the millions of cars parked on our streets every single day in London?”
Total deflection. won’t even acknowledge there’s a problem. Guess he also doesn’t want to talk about the shattered leg bones and operations that often result from a Lime bike fall, because they’re so ridiculously heavy. The operations to pin the legs are publicly funded, is Lime going to start paying for the extra load on the NHS, the operations, people loss of income?
There’s already a public bike hire scheme in London, just expand that.
Wait so the government banned electric scooters and are confiscating electric bikes …
But if you rent one from them its ok ?
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