Households in London with two or more cars should be giving up on-street spaces for hire bike bays, according to electric bike provider Forest.

The hire bike provider’s head of operations Will Jansen has made the case to The Times newspaper, arguing there is “more room to challenge car owners in London” and that “more pressure could be applied to car owners to free up some of this space”.

Forest is hoping to add another 2,000 bikes to its fleet, having already got 15,000 shared e-bikes available for hire in London. This is significantly fewer than Lime’s e-bike offering but Forest’s bikes work in the same dockless format, whereby they don’t have to be picked up and dropped off in designated docking stations, as is the case with Santander Cycles.

We’ve regularly reported on issues around parking, some residents and councils unhappy with anti-social parking that has seen pavements blocked and prompted some areas to deploy parking zones to fine riders who don’t leave their dockless bikes in a designated area.

However, Mr Jansen pointed out poor parking isn’t just a problem for cyclists and suggested the next “big step” would be to make it “a lot clearer” where bikes can be parked. In his mind, providing more space for designated areas where bikes could be left, using geofencing via GPS and local rules, would be a more effective approach.

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For this to work though he suggests those households with more than one car should be encouraged to give up space for more e-bike areas.

“There is more room to challenge car owners in London,” he said. “More pressure could be applied to car owners to free up some of this space.”

In 2023, Forest announced it is to use AI technology to review photos of its users’ parked e-bikes, that after hire bikes’ increasing popularity has come with complaints from some residents and councils about where they are left.

> Stop whining about Lime bikes: they’re currently the jewel in Britain’s diminutive active travel crown

Similar complaints have been pointed at fellow dockless e-bike provider Lime, with “pissed off” residents even vandalising bikes with angle grinders last autumn.

In January, Lime launched a £20m plan to clamp down on “obstructive” e-bike parking, something which includes the creation of 2,500 new parking spaces.