At the moment, dockless bike providers like Lime, Tier and Forest aren't required to ask users to park in specific areas. This has led to some rental e-bikes being dumped on pavements causing a nuisance and a hazard for pedestrians, and making our pavements less safe.
By encouraging users to park in designated spots, Westminster’s pavements will be safer and accessible and it will be easier for those that live, work or visit Westminster to find and use rental e-bikes.
Why are we introducing a scheme?
With over 3,000 dockless bikes in the city at any time, it's becoming a challenge to keep our pavements free from dumped bikes. We are working to encourage cleaner, low emission transport in the city but some dockless bike users are causing problems by blocking footways and making it hard for pedestrians, especially those with visual or mobility impairments.
To tackle this, we're introducing a mandatory parking bay scheme across Westminster. This means users will need to end their trips in one of our designated bays. These new parking bays will be spread across Westminster, with more bays in the areas where demand is highest.
We're actively collaborating with bike operators, Transport for London, and other authorities to find long-term solutions. In the meantime this new parking bays scheme aims to provide easy access to dockless bike hire, encourage active travel, promote responsible bike usage, and create a bay network for e-bike users across the city.
The bay network
We're working with three dockless bike operators – Forest, TIER, and Lime – to implement the new parking bays. Over the past few months, we have set up 200 designated bays for parking both dockless bikes and e-scooters, and an additional 130 virtual bays for e-bike parking only, totalling over 330 locations in total. There is now at least 1 parking bay every 300m across the city, making it easier for everyone to choose sustainable travel.
In busy central areas, we'll have more bays to meet the high demand for bikes. Bays will be placed on the footway or carriageway, depending on what works best in each location.
In the initial roll-out there will be a parking bay within a 5-minute walk from every household in Westminster. We will look to expand the network where there's a clear demand for more bikes.
The network is being rolled out in 2 phases. From October, bays will be operational in the central areas of our city where we see the highest demand. The second phase is expected in the next couple of months which will see the remaining bays installed across the city.
View bay locations on our online map
Please note that our pre-existing e-scooter rental bays will be merged with these new rental e-bike bays. If you have any concerns about rental e-scooters, you should check the company's app and websites for advice
Monitoring and enforcement
All bays will be monitored by the operators to ensure that any bikes parked outside of dedicated bays are identified and removed quickly.