As active travel in London becomes more popular, e-bicycle hire schemes are following suit. Unfortunately not all are considerate riders and my office regularly receives complaints about Lime bikes obstructing pavements locally. Teaching staff are also concerned that students too young to use the service legally can easily unlock the bikes.
I contacted Lime about these issues and Director of Policy for the UK and Ireland Hal Stevenson assures me they are being addressed. You can read this response in full below:
From: Hal Stevenson
Sent: 23 July 2025 17:37
To: FOXCROFT, Vicky <vicky.foxcroft.mp@parliament.uk>
Subject: Re: Lime bicycle access and parking in Lewisham North
Dear Ms Foxcroft,
Thank you for your letter of 27 May regarding Lime e-bike access and parking in Lewisham North. Our CEO, Wayne Ting, has asked me to respond as Lime’s Director of Policy for the UK and Ireland. Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying.
Regarding parking issues in Lewisham, the first few phases of parking bays have been introduced by Lewisham Council. The location of these bays is decided by the council, however we are happy to work with both your office and the Council to ensure these are well placed to address local concerns.
We are committed to improving user parking behaviour in Lewisham and across London. Our £20 million London Action Plan includes a dedicated Parking Infrastructure Fund to create 2,500 new e-bike bays, and we have hired more than 250 additional staff to relocate misparked bikes and manage overcrowding.
Lime is also taking steps to improve users’ riding behaviour through our recently launched Respect the Red campaign. Backed by independent behavioural research, this aims to reduce red-light running and other forms of unsafe cycling. As part of this work we are supporting the delivery of free cycle training, in partnership with Cycling UK, to help riders better understand the rules of the road and operate in a respectful manner.
Due to the popularity of our service, we also experience regular issues with a small number of people trying to use our service for free or steal our vehicles. This is currently impacting 1% of our trips in London. We are tackling this through a number of different measures:
- We are engaging with the local police force, schools and community groups.
- We are also implementing a retrofit to our fleet with a new locking system as well as software changes that use regenerative braking to prevent bikes being pedalled manually.
- The new locks will be fully implemented by the end of August and early indicators suggest that this will prevent further issues.
Thank you again for getting in touch. I would welcome a meeting to answer any other questions you have and explain what more we are doing to drive active travel progress and responsible rider behaviour across London.
Best wishes,
Hal