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For most Londoners, e-bikes are part of the fabric of city life. Whether you’re cheerfully zipping across town or grumpily picking your way around fallen Limes on the pavement, you can’t avoid them. But in Waltham Forest, dockless e-bikes are currently banned from the whole borough – even though neighbourhoods like Leyton and Walthamstow are packed full of keen cyclists who might like a little electrical assistance on their next ride. Still, all that could be set to change, after the area’s new Green council leader Paul Perkins announced a new public consultation on e-bikes over the weekend.
For eight years, Waltham Forest has said no to e-bikes, joining nine other London boroughs which ban private companies such as Lime and Forest from operating (Barnet, Bexley, Croydon, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Newham, Redbridge and Tower Hamlets). This might seem slightly surprising given that Waltham Forest has excellent cycling infrastructure. It was part of a 2014 scheme to turn it into a ‘mini-Holland’ for cyclists, granting it millions of pounds of funding. Today it’s a paradise for lycra-wearers, with a breezy 22km of cycle lanes and over 1,000 bike hangars. So why ban e-bikes from the two-wheeled party?
Well, it turns out they’ve been bitten before. In 2017, Waltham Forest ran a pilot scheme with Irish company Urbo that was a bit of a disaster. After just 10 months, it was abandoned, after complaints about the bikes littering the streets and blocking pavements. Understandably, the borough’s Labour council (which was in control from 2010 until May this year) was a bit cautious about letting e-bikes back on the street.
Now, the Greens are running Waltham Forest, and they can see lots of clear benefits to e-bikes: they reduce car journeys, encourage people to try cycling for the first time, and lessen congestion on public transport routes. The public consultation will ask residents for their views on key issues including where the e-bikes should be stationed: proposals may include designated docking areas, to avoid messy piles of discarded cycles on the pavements.
There’ll also be decisions to make about which providers will be welcomed in: Lime, Forest, and Voi are the main options in other boroughs. Local residents, chip in with your opinions here: who knows, next year you could be whizzing down the Walthamstow beer mile with a locally crafted pint in your Lime bike basket.
It’s official: London now has more cycle lanes than tube lines.
Do you prefer your cycling a bit more lo-fi? Check out the Brompton World Championships.
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