I see this with e-scooters for hire too. Essentially this is abuse of the public realm. That space is abused because it's not owned by any one individual. I've come the conclusion it's a form of flytipping and the hire companies are responsible. After all it's theos companies seeking to use council land as business space. A few years ago I read reports that one London borough (Camden?) removed all the dockless hire bikes from the pavements just days after they 'appeared'. I think they removed them under flytipping laws.
In contrast, Boris bikes can't fall over because they're parked at bike docks.
Mobike in Manchester was an innovative dockless scheme that failed a few years ago. It failed with people stealing some of the bikes (by taking a hammer to the glorified-nurses-lock serving as immobiliser), while other bikes were thrown in the canal. Their replacements are parked in bike docks.
And yet for cars we don't consider it fly tipping, hell the council goes to great lengths to provide shit tons of space for them. In some cities, they spend upto €60000 per space to build them.
Sure we moan when cars get dumped on the pavement, but most of the country has no ban on such things.
Perhaps, if we refactored how we look at the micromobility hire devices, we might reach a different conclusion:
- Councils have failed to make available appropriate facilities for their usage
We could take out parking spaces and put in some bike racks, to use as a geodock, and there would be a lot fewer issues. Hell we could just take out lots of parking spaces and put bike racks in their place, and everyone could benefit.
The persecution policies against micromobility devices is a very strong contrast compared to what we allow for cars.
"hey but we need to geo fence and limit the speed limit of these 20kg devices" They say as they ignore the 2ton death cages doing 50kph next to them.
Maybe it's time we looked at this the other way round.
J
