A report into the condition of London’s Lime hire bikes has suggested that around one in ten should be taken off the road due to dangerous mechanical issues such as malfunctioning brakes or missing parts.
News website London Centric hired 50 of Lime’s e-bikes in central London and got an experienced bike mechanic to assess their condition. It was his conclusion that 12 per cent should not be in use due to concerns such as brakes not working properly, missing parts, and flat tyres — however, many remained available for hire despite the issues being reported to Lime.
Looking at the numbers more closely, James Holloway — a cycling instructor and mechanic — reported 18 per cent had missing parts while 14 per cent had issues with braking.
He said: “The main issue for me is somebody jumping on a bike that for all intents and purposes looks fine to ride. They suddenly hit the brake hard and they either find it’s not working as well as they’d like it to in the event of trying to avoid a collision — or that it binds on and causes them to skid.”
In response to the report, Lime insisted that safety is “our highest priority”, although London Centric questioned why many of the unsafe bikes in question remained available to the public despite being reported for issues.
The website reported one bike with a missing saddle, but it remained on the app available for hire.
A spokesperson for Lime said maintenance checks are conducted regularly but suggested due to “high levels of rider subjectivity and erroneous reporting”, bikes are not immediately stopped from being hired when a report of a safety issue is made unless it concerns their brakes.
“We will mark the vehicle for inspection from our team, but we do not remove it from service unless additional reports are received from recent riders,” the hire bike provider explained, brake concerns being the exception and cause for immediate immobilisation until a mechanic has checked the bike.
“Lime’s industry-leading approach to safety has resulted in 99.99 per cent of trips ending without a reported incident, and we continue to strive to ensure every ride ends safely,” a spokesperson commented.
In January, Lime announced the launch of a £20m ‘Action Plan’ to improve e-bike parking in London – a seemingly constant source of discontent in the capital in recent years.
12 thoughts on “One in 10 Lime bikes have dangerous mechanical issues including malfunctioning brakes, report suggests”
Fair point about the brakes.
Fair point about the brakes. But users would notice pretty quickly if the tyre was flat or the bike was missing a saddle.
Rome73 wrote:
Given the state of some of the people I’ve seen getting on Lime bikes after closing time, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Forgive my lack of
Forgive my lack of astonishment – but:
a) still not sure exactly what Lime’s money making model is. At least some of the dockless bike companies essentially used dumping in public spaces as a way to make cash from venture capital / advertising. And I’m dubious that large-scale open-access bike hire actually makes money on the hire part anyway (see later).
b) hire bikes get trashed far quicker than privately owned ones. Bikes left unsupervised in public spaces get trashed faster than that.
That’s why the more successful models for large-scale bike hire tend to be “dock-based” – or even integrated with another service. That takes care of the “watchful eyes” to deter some vandalism and theft. And means people are on hand who can spot / do something about faulty bikes – even if it’s just taking them out of service.
In the case of something like the Dutch OV Fiets service it also gives a good financial base for the bike rental perhaps not covering its own costs as that potentially feeds more customers into using the railways.
chrisonabike wrote:
Looking it up I’m quite surprised to find that Lime does indeed make a profit, having become the first micromobility company in the UK to do so in 2022 and repeating that in subsequent years. The profits seem quite small though, $4 million on $466 million of bookings, so I don’t know what sort of ROI that’s providing. It would be quite surprising if they weren’t making a profit in London, their popularity here really has to be seen to be believed.
I’ve no insider knowledge but
I’ve no insider knowledge but I believe there are a lot of costs in the business, vs a fairly low limit that sufficient people are prepared to pay for a bike ride!
I’m guessing the major cost is manpower. Even for dockless bikes likely need redistributing else they all end up either at a few popular locations or left way off the beaten track. They’ll presumably have people going out to check / recharge them also.
The bikes are not cheap either – they’re custom built, and each bike is effectively + 1 mobile (location, billing).
Then they’ll get dropped / run over (because in public space, unsupervised), people will deliberately vandalise them, they get stolen anyway, and it sounds like people like hacking the Lime ones for free rides.
AFAIK the longer-lasting schemes tend to be a) fixed location-based (either docked or rented from transit hubs like OV Fiets) and b) have contributions from elsewhere. That’s sometimes advertising (and/or council funding?) e.g. for the likes of NextBike / TIER. In the OVFiets case funding by the national railway company.
I’ve seen loads of people
I’ve seen loads of people riding Lime bikes with flat tyres. And while I was walking the dog last night I noted one of the bikes in the e-bike parking area round the corner from my house didn’t have a saddle. I’ve seen several being ridden that have very dodgy wheel alignment and one with badly bent bars. Some people riding them don’t care and some don’t know. The standard of riding of people on Lime bikes I see suggests that many are very inexperienced, not least the woman I saw getting on one who fell off it three times in the space of about 100m.
The way they’re left after use suggests that many people who ride them don’t care and don’t think about anyone else.
I’ve rented Lime bikes a few times myself and they are very useful at times. Both my sons use them regularly too. But we’re all experienced cyclists and we wouldn’t ride one in poor condition.
Ratio would seem to fit in
Ratio would seem to fit in with my experiamce so far in West London. Used for half a week from Tube to work (plus return) 1 bike had a rear brake that was either on or off. Still got me to work, with no effort, and reported as I ended ride. Was collected by a maintenance van a couple of hours later.
‘…Lime insisted that safety
‘…Lime insisted that safety is “our highest priority”…‘
– then –
“…bikes are not immediately stopped from being hired when a report of a safety issue is made unless it concerns their brakes.“
Loose steering, flat tyres, loose saddle, loose cranks, loose pedals, cracked frame, inoperable lights, would not be safety concerns, apparently. Nice (for profits).
The numbers seem to be all
The numbers seem to be all over the place. The head line says 1:10. The first paragraph says 12%, which is 1:8. Later in the article it says 14% had issues with braking — that is 1:7. Nowhere in the article (except the headline) is anything 1:10?!
As far as I can see, the only
As far as I can see, the only place anything like that number appears in the source story is in the video, near the end, when they’re chatting after their ‘Lime Safari’, and he says
Presumably, it was six (the 12%), and the ‘one in ten’ is just road.cc’s sloppy rehashing of the ‘about 10%’.
The whole thing seems a bit dubious anyway – it looked like they were deliberately picking out ones that looked like they’d taken a bit of abuse in order to find problems, rather than somehow randomly selecting them.
Plus quoting things as percentages when you’re dealing with such small numbers mostly just serves to obfuscate things – you’d be better off quoting the actual numbers.
Given that every other lime
Given that every other lime bike I see on my 1/week commute into london appears to have its rear light hanging off by the cable rather than mounted to point backwards, this really doesn’t surprise me…
I mean this should be trivial to spot before you do any other functionality checks…
Business model innit? When
Business model innit? When they brought in hire bikes in our town, they approached the bike shop I was then running to so the maintence. It was the most ludicrous one-sided almost non-renumerated it of contractual filth imagineable; obviouslly we told them to take a running jump. So I have do doubt they are getting un/badly trainined mecs working for peanuts to have a stab at it, and no more – if that, looking at the general state of the bikes I see around.