Londonwide restrictions that would require e-bikes to be parked in designated bays could “stifle” their attractiveness as a green alternative to car travel, Transport for London has been warned.
TfL is drawing up pan-London rules for “micro mobility” vehicles – e-bikes and e-scooters – with London Councils, which represents the 33 boroughs.
These could be in place from “early 2026” and would limit the number of bikes per borough and city-wide, and ban the use of “free floating” parking where riders are able to leave a bike where they want after finishing their journey.
But Forest, which has 10,000 e-bikes in London, believes that placing too many rules on where the bikes can be parked, and on how many can be provided in each borough, will make them less attractive to Londoners.
It wants a “hybrid” approach, with cyclists able to park the bikes in designated bays or responsibly beside the roadside without blocking pavements.
Forest head of policy Alex Berwin said: “Yes, we need dedicated parking bays and mandatory parking, but when you go out to the more suburban areas, having more of a free-floating model works best, so people can have more flexibility around where they want to end their ride - nearer their home, for example.
“We can’t have something like the scooter trial, which is just mandatory parking across the whole city - very few parking bays, very few vehicles on the road, which has ultimately really stifled the scheme and made it not really usable for anyone.”
There are more than 40,000 e-bikes available for hire in the capital, including about 30,000 Lime bikes, as demand has soared, especially among young Londoners.
Last week TfL added 900 more e-bikes to its 14,000-strong fleet of “Boris bikes” in an attempt to reclaim its share of the market after use of its conventional pedal bikes plummeted by 2.3million hires in the last year. It aims to have 2,000 e-Boris bikes by the end of the summer.
Between January 2019 and March 2023, there have been more than 12 million trips on Lime bikes by 1.25million riders. About a fifth of Lime riders had never previously cycled in London.
The London e-scooter rental trial launched in June 2021. Since then, more than three million trips have been taken across the 10 participating boroughs.
But Forest believes e-scooters have fallen behind e-bikes in popularity because of the heavily-regulated nature of the trial, which has restricted the number of e-scooters available and where they can be parked.
TfL was asked to oversee a Londonwide approach to help to control situations where e-bikes are abandoned on pavements, posing a risk for pedestrians.
Forest and Lime say “problem parking” now occurs in only about five per cent of hires – about a quarter of the scale of the problem previously.
Lime has also been able to reduce anti-social parking by making it harder for its bikes to be “hacked” and ridden without consent.
Will Jansen, chief operating officer at Forest, said some boroughs had struggled to provide a high “density” of parking bays to enable the bike firms to meet demand.
“When someone opens our app they can be sure there will be a bike [nearby] and they can get to work on that bike,” he said. “The freedom to have one every few hundred metres is advantageous.
“Arguably the scooter trials were very heavily regulated by TfL and maybe, to some degree, stifled. There were limitations on the vehicles, how fast they could go, legal requirements and limited parking density. As a result, people didn’t use them.
“We are trying to make this shift in people’s minds to choose a different transport mode – an e-bike rather than taking a car or a train. It’s really important we prove to the user that they can rely on the service.”
A TfL spokesperson said: “We know that poor e-bike parking can cause significant safety issues for many Londoners, particularly disabled and older people.
“Our experience from the existing e-scooter trial shows that well-managed and regulated schemes can be successful in mitigating such issues.
"To tackle this we're looking closely at how we can improve the management of e-bikes in London.
“This includes exploring a coordinated scheme with London Councils and the London boroughs to manage dockless e-bikes and e-scooters in London, through a contract. No decisions have yet been taken.”
