Lime pumps £1m into parking to tackle London e-bike clutter
Green bike conglomerate Lime is pumping nearly £1m into hundreds of new e-bike parking bays as it looks to tackle the pavement clutter that has accompanied London’s rental bike boom.
The capital’s biggest shared e-bike operator has awarded £886,857 to nine boroughs, including Greenwich, Lambeth and Hackney, to create or expand 586 parking bays this year.
Lime is now offering a further £1m to councils to ease overcrowding at existing bays and address one of the biggest complaints about the rapid spread of rental bikes across London.
Over one million cycling journeys are now made in the capital each day, according to Transport for London (TfL) figures cited by Lime, with one in 10 taken on a shared e-bike. But the surge in demand has left councils grappling with where to put the growing number of bikes, particularly in busy parts of central and inner London.
“More people than ever are choosing shared e-bikes to get around London”, Alice Pleasant, Lime’s deputy regional head of government relations, said.
“That’s bringing clear benefits, but it also means we need to work with our borough partners to cater for the increased parking demand”.
Lime has now helped fund more than 3,400 bays across London and said its total parking investment in 2026 will reach around £1.5m once the first round of projects is completed.
Unlike some council contracts governing which companies can operate in individual boroughs, parking spaces delivered through Lime’s fund are open to bikes from all rental operators, including rivals Forest and Voi.
The £5m parking fund forms part of Lime’s wider £20m London Action Plan, while councils have until 22 October to apply for the latest £1m funding round.
London tackles e-bike growing pains
Parking has emerged as a thorny issue for an industry that has rapidly become part of London’s transport network.
The capital currently relies on a patchwork of borough-level agreements, meaning the companies allowed to operate and park bikes can change as riders cross council boundaries.
Richmond earlier this year awarded Forest an exclusive three-year contract after it outbid Lime, despite Lime recording around 1.5 million journeys in the borough in 2025.
Lime retains “ride through” rights but cannot park or hire bikes there, raising concerns that riders could instead leave them around the borough boundary.
Similar problems emerged in Hounslow after Lime was initially excluded, with bikes abandoned around Chiswick Bridge and Shepherd’s Bush as geofencing prevented journeys from continuing through the borough.
The government is preparing the ground for a London-wide licensing system that would give Transport for London greater control over shared e-bike operators, replacing the fragmented approach.
Matthew Clark, head of new mobility at Steer, which independently administers Lime’s fund, said the bays councils build now would help prepare for a “more consistent, safer and sustainable future”.
Lime also has a commercial incentive to solve the parking problem as it tries to convert more Londoners into regular riders.
Its own Opinium survey of 1,000 Londoners found 21 per cent were more likely to use a shared e-bike if safer parking was available at their destination, alongside broad support for more local bays.
The investment follows Lime’s move last week to offer its annual subscription through the Cycle to Work scheme, part of a push to capture more of London’s daily commute.
Lime’s UK revenue jumped 75 per cent to £111.3m in 2024 as demand for its bikes surged.