Lime bikes blocking Euston Road [Simon Lamrock]

THE Town Hall has signed a two-year deal with e-bike giants Lime – despite intense criticism of the company’s performance across Camden.

Incredibly, the announcement of the contract came as a total surprise to councillors who had set up a scrutiny committee meeting to quiz the company’s chiefs on Tuesday.

After they spent more than an hour listening to deputations about obstructed pavements and discussing how the firm must improve if it was to carry on as an operator, a senior official suddenly announced that the contract had already been sealed.

This meant any suggestions that came from frustrated residents and councillors could not effectively be taken forward as they would be in breach of the agreement.

The meeting came after thousands of complaints about the green bikes blocking pavements and causing problems for disabled and blind people.

A senior official at Camden told the meeting they had put a “huge investment” in setting up the designated bays across Camden that are being routinely ignored by riders.

The Lime representatives, meanwhile, faced a string of tough questions at the meeting, where they admitted problems with the bikes’ GPS trackers and a misfiring system for checking whether riders had broken the rules.

Committee chairman Councillor Awale Olad asked them: “Are your bikes causing an obstruction and therefore an offence under the Highways Act? Who should be arrested? What should I have said to the woman on the mobility scooter who was screaming at me as her councillor because four bikes were dumped in her way?”

He added in his questioning: “Do you agree they represent a huge significant risk to life and limb and are an absolute danger to life?”

Cllr Olad also suggested Lime was “incentivising bad behaviour” because the high charge per minute of renting a bike made riders dash about as fast as possible, adding: “You are the most expensive on every metric by quite far.”

Lime’s public affairs manager Hal Stevenson said: “We know our system needs to be improved. Parking compliance is around 70 per cent. We have 130,000 trips a month in Camden, with roughly 30 percent left outside a bay.”

He said the bikes’ GPS trackers were not working as had been hoped and this meant the bike did not always know where it was and was “less likely to know the location of a bay”, adding:

“The second issue is we require all users to take a photo of where they leave the bike. At the moment those photos are being manually reviewed by a team in a warehouse. They are incentivised to review a certain number a day.

“We know that will create quality control problems. So we are moving to a machine-learning model. Machine learning will prevent the trip from ending if the bike is not properly parked.”

Paul Braithwaite – a former Liberal Democrat and council “cycling champion” who lives in Kentish Town – said in a deputation: “Lime bikes have become an increasingly irritating obstacle course. [They are] a danger to pedestrians – particularly those who are disabled or visually impaired. Camden Council has persistently failed us in its duty to enforce and police these schemes.”

Hampstead ward councillor Linda Chung had said: “I object to the contemptuous way bikes are dumped. I’ve fallen over one. There seems to be a lack of enforcement, and I can’t see anything here that shows that is about to change.”

But some Labour councillors spoke in support of the scheme. Labour councillor Camron Aref-Adi said: “I have friends who might not own a car, and might not take an Uber ride, but they will take a Lime bike somewhere.”

And South Hampstead ward councillor Nina de Ayala Parker said: “I use Lime bikes. I got one here today. I get them instead of getting a bus. I get exercise using Lime bikes.”

Sam Margolis, ­Camden’s head of transport strategy and projects, said: “Dockless bikes are proving to be a very popular mode of transport in Camden. There’s an average of 40,000 users a month. Moving from an informal agreement to a contract system, we are one of two boroughs entering into a contract.

“We think dockless bike hire has an important role to play in travelling in a low-cost way in the cost of living crisis. The cost to the user was a key assessment criteria. Human Forest has a particularly low pay-as-you-go rate, which will be attractive to those on lower incomes.”

Mr Margolis then said at the end of the meeting that he been informed that the deal with Lime was now in place and any changes suggested by the committee would be considered a breach of contract.

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