Greenwich Council is poised to sign a deal to create parking bays for Lime bikes in part of the borough – two years after plans to try to regulate the dockless cycles were first announced.
Lime will pay the council £30,000 plus £170 per parking bay created as part of a one-year trial. However, only an area around Greenwich town centre will be covered at first.
The decision paper – published this week in an obscure corner of the council website – comes three years after Lime first started operating in the northwest corner of the borough, and nearly two years after neighbouring Lewisham signed a similar deal.
In 2023 Greenwich first announced plans to sign a deal with Lime and its rival, Forest, but little progress was made. Earlier this year frustrated councillors – angry about users dumping bikes in unsafe locations – backed a motion threatening to ban Lime from the borough if a deal was not signed by this summer.
Neither the mayor nor individual boroughs have any legal powers over dockless cycle or scooter hire schemes, meaning councils have to attempt to sign their own deals with providers to have any chance of regulating them. A new devolution bill going through parliament will finally hand powers to Transport for London for a consistent approach across the capital.
At present, there is largely a free-for-all in an area running as far as Charlton station and Kidbrooke Park Road, although hacked and stolen bikes can be seen further afield. Users hire the bikes with an app on their phone, which unlocks them and tracks their movements.
However, Forest, which recently introduced its bikes to Lewisham and Greenwich without agreement with the councils, is not covered by the deal – meaning that the problem of dumped bikes, even in the area covered by the trial, is unlikely to go away.
The first phase of the trial will include the area immediately around Greenwich town centre. A further three phases are planned, but there is no detail in the paper on where these will cover.
Some 79 parking bays will be created, with the council hoping to convert existing parking bays rather than take up space on pavements. No list of locations have been made public, but the decision paper says that local councillors have been told where they are.
“Users would be unable to end a hire and park a bike outside of bays,” the decision paper says.
The agreement – which has also not been made public – sets out where the bikes can be used, where they should be subject to automatically-imposed speed limits, how many bikes should be deployed and what customer service is on offer. Parking compliance will be reviewed in monthly meetings with Lime.
“A high level of parking compliance from users will be one of the key metrics evaluated when deciding on whether to extend the term of the memorandum of understanding with the operator,” the document says.
The deal “will help to improve the convenience and reliability of the service for users, while minimising the negative impact of irresponsibly parked bikes for non-users”.
The decision to sign the agreement will be confirmed next week, unless councillors call it in for further scrutiny.
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