Transport for London’s plans to overhaul the city’s regulations for e-bike hire look set to be delayed after the Department for Transport confirmed plans to hold a public consultation on the matter.
Each London borough has tendered out contracts to e-bike providers, such as Lime, Forest and Voi for fixed periods of time, with several councils signing exclusive agreements that prohibit other providers from operating within areas of the city. The system has created a patchwork map of operators across the capital, and has also led several areas to overflow with parked e-bikes, often to the irritation of pedestrians and cyclists alike.
The English Devolution Act, which became law in April earlier this year, gives the Mayor of London power to determine the licensing and regulation of e-bikes across the city. The announcement was welcomed by both e-bike operators and City Hall, with a TfL spokesperson telling ebiketips, “We welcome the new legislation which will provide TfL with powers to regulate dockless bikes across London and introduce consistent safety standards.
“This will give us the future ability to replace the current patchwork, borough-by-borough approach with a consistent London-wide licensing scheme. We’re already working closely with boroughs and partners to develop proposals for that scheme and will set out further details in due course.”
However, the relevant powers to introduce city-wide licensing are reliant on the Department for Transport separately setting out additional regulations. And a spokesperson has thrown cold water on the likelihood of those regulations being announced soon, confirming the department “will set out new regulations and guidance for the licensing of hire schemes after a public consultation, which will launch in the coming months.”
The expected delay of city-wide licensing until the new year has become more prominent following events in Ealing where one e-bike operator has begun operating in defiance of their expired contract. Ealing Council told the Local Democracy Reporter that the Memorandum of Understanding, signed with Lime and Forest and not Voi, was “in line with the majority of London boroughs” when contracting dockless e-bike hire providers.
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However, Voi has criticised the council’s “mini-procurement” process and has continued operating. A spokesperson told the LDR, “There is no statutory licensing regime that requires a council’s permission to operate dockless e-bikes on the public highway, and we do not believe that the selection process used gives the council grounds to exclude a compliant operator.
“Neither, within this context, do we believe it to be fair to Ealing residents that Voi’s removal would deprive them of the cheapest per-minute dockless e-bike rental service in London.
“That said, we’d much rather be operating in Ealing under a formal agreement – it would give officers greater oversight and it’s better for the borough’s finances.”
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Ealing Council has said they are waiting for TfL and DfT licensing plans to be implemented before taking action, creating this legal loophole. Separately, Forest has warned that “inconsistent approaches across boroughs to regulation, operations and parking, as well as unsustainable revenue-sharing and spiralling enforcement costs” are threatening the e-bike hire industry more broadly, in a letter to Sadiq Khan supported by the London Cycling Campaign and the London Clean Air Initiative, City AM reports.
In a letter to Sadiq Khan, Forest’s co-founders wrote, “No other mode of transport used by hundreds of thousands of Londoners is regulated on a borough by borough basis. There is no reason that shared e-bikes should be the exception.”
