Right, so picture this. You're trying to get down a narrow pavement in east London, maybe you're pushing a buggy, maybe you're in a wheelchair, maybe you're just a normal person trying to exist outdoors, and some absolute merchant has dumped a hire bike sideways across the entire path. Again. For the four hundredth time this month.
That's basically daily life around parts of Bethnal Green, Whitechapel and Shoreditch right now, according to locals who've had enough and taken their frustrations all the way to the council chamber.
A group of campaigners presented a petition warning that badly parked dockless bikes, y'know, the ones you rent via an app and then just... leave wherever your legs stop working, had turned certain pavements into obstacle courses. Narrow streets already crammed with foot traffic are apparently getting choked by abandoned two-wheelers, and for anyone with mobility issues, a pushchair, or literally just a pair of eyes that can see a hazard forming, it's beyond a joke.
The campaigners were crystal clear: nobody's against cycling. This isn't some car-brained anti-bike crusade. They just want people to stop treating public pavements like a dumping ground for hire bikes they've finished with.
Apparently they'd already been bending the ear of senior council managers for over a year before taking it to the chamber. A whole year. With, by their account, absolutely nothing to show for it.
The council chief exec has now confirmed that work on designated parking zones is underway, pointing to what Hackney and Islington have already done. Whether that actually happens in a reasonable timeframe, or gets shuffled into a committee folder and forgotten, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, there are even calls for certain areas to be made entirely off-limits for dockless bikes, and for antisocial behaviour officers to patrol the worst hotspots.
Honestly, seems reasonable. Have the hire bike companies got any skin in this game, or are they just happy to let councils clean up the mess?
What do you reckon, should dockless bikes be banned from certain areas entirely, or is designated parking enough? Drop your thoughts below.