We are driving to a compound in London where seized hire e-bikes are taken. In the back of the van, there are three. We are sitting in the front and you can hear their alarms bleeping incessantly behind us.
The noise is loud and irritating.
Giri Manepalli, who is a street enforcement officer, says sometimes when he finishes a shift, he can still hear the bleeping in his head.
It’s not really surprising as he has done this trip many times. In Kensington and Chelsea, his team has seized over a thousand dockless hire e-bikes since they began to take on the issue.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) is trying to deal with the huge amount of dockless hire e-bikes that end up on its streets. Councillors say badly parked e-bikes are among the main complaints they get from local residents.
The problem is there are a lot of hire bikes left in this central London borough, and some are not parked properly.
Around half-a-million hire e-bike journeys a day start and finish here so the council has found itself on the frontline of this new phenomenon.
Giri says he’s seen some terrible e-bike parking while carrying out his work.
“The worst I have seen is right in the middle of the carriageway. I don’t know who would park there – it was literally in the middle of the road. I was so shocked. People were honking their horns, by coincidence we were there and we seized it.
“I would say it’s about the timing. I understand everyone is busy in their lives, but it is important to keep areas safe and sometimes people don’t park properly,” he says.
It doesn’t take long to find an e-bike left right in the middle of a pavement.
There are official parking bays in the borough, but they fill up quickly. At one bay the bikes are sticking right out into the road.
The council now charges the operators a retrieval fee of £84.45 per unit to get their e-bikes back. It has brought in about £100,000 so far.
The street teams have to use highway laws to seize the bikes, meaning they can only take them if they are considered to be obstructing a highway or causing a danger.
It is complicated and sometimes while a bike may look like it is blocking a pavement or a road, it is allowed to be there.
For example, if there is a gap of 1.2m (5ft) for people to get round the bike – even if it’s in the middle of the pavement – then it is legally parked and the council can’t move it. A lot of the time it then has to contact the operator to remove the bike.
When asked why the council doesn’t just shift the badly parked bikes to a safer position rather than confiscating them, Giri says it is to act as a deterrent.
“We can’t just move the bikes and do the whole job for the operators. We are making sure they keep safe, but at the same time we are enforcing when needed,” he says.
The main operator in London is Lime, but there are others including Forest, Voi and Bolt.
Hire e-bikes are seen as a clean, zero emissions form of transport, which have proved popular with people. Councils have welcomed the schemes in their areas, including RBKC.
But the problem is the parking. And as riders pay by the minute, they are usually in a rush.
At the compound there are probably 200 or so bikes that have been seized by the council.
The authority wants a change in the law to make it much easier to confiscate bikes.
Councillor Johnny Thalassites is lead member for environment and planning at RBKC. He says the situation is difficult.
“We have to store these bikes and there’s a lot of pressure on space. You can also only take e-bikes away if they are a danger which is quite a high threshold.
“What you or I may think is a danger, may not be the same as what the highways laws say, so things that are definitely an obstruction, that I would think are definitely an obstruction, we are not able to take them away.”
He believes local authorities need to be given more powers to address the problem.
“I think the scope of what has to be removed has to be widened and there needs to be more support for councils to carry out this kind of enforcement action because this is one of the most common things people raise on the doorstep at the moment.
“We don’t have the powers to do what we want to do about it. If people see e-bikes docked unsafely, then they think that’s not good enough and… they’re right.
“We need to do more. That’s why we are taking this step and seizing bikes,” he says.
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has previously hailed the increase in people cycling as a result of the schemes, but hasdescribed the current situation as being like “the Wild West”.
“Regulation has not caught up with the pace of people’s desire to use cycle hire bikes,” he said.
“One council has a certain set of rules, another council doesn’t allow the bikes, another council has a different set of rules.
“We should have one system across London and we are lobbying the government to have a pan-London system of regulation.”
Lime says it is committed to working with RBKC to prevent the need for further enforcement.
In a statement, it said: “We recognise that mis-parked bikes are a challenge across the industry, largely due to e-bike parking not keeping pace with growing demand from riders. Since January, we’ve helped fund over 1,100 new e-bike parking bays across London, bringing the total number of bays we’ve helped create to more than 3,400.
“Riders must also submit an end-trip photo, with those parking obstructively receiving warnings, fines, or bans for repeat offences. We also expanded our on-street team earlier this year to remove mis-parked bikes and ease congestion in busy areas.”
Voi says it is “collaborating with boroughs and organisations like London Sight Loss Councils to deliver a service that works for riders and non-riders alike.
“Although Voi operates close to 20% of the e-bike fleet permitted by Kensington and Chelsea, fewer than 1% of e-bikes seized in the borough to date are Voi e-bikes.”
Alex Berwin, head of policy at Forest, says the company takes “our responsibility to Kensington and Chelsea residents seriously… and we’re investing heavily in better parking technology, in-app guidance and rider education to support good behaviour.
“A consistent, pan-London approach would make a huge difference, and we’re ready to work closely with boroughs and the mayor to help make London the best cycling city in the world.”
Any legislation changes may take some time to come in.
TheEnglish Devolution Billcurrently going through Parliament will give Transport for London the powers to regulate and license dockless e-bikes.
It could get the powers to remove all e-bikes if they are not parked in a designated parking bay, and fine the operators.
Supporters say a similar trial with e-scooters had a 90% compliance rate.
But for the time being Giri and his team will continue to seize badly parked e-bikes and fine the operators.
