As we reported recently, Lime bikes have been a key part of the increase in cycling journeys across London, but have caused some issues. It was good to read in the recent issue 15 newsletter from The Crane Valley Partnership that Lime are working with the Environment Agency on a retrieval scheme for Lime bikes dumped in rivers.
Volunteers that keep rivers clean can struggle to remove stolen and dumped Lime bikes that they find in watercourses so the Environment Agency (EA) has worked with Lime to develop a “vehicle recovery arrangement”.
According to the newsletter “The EA advises that the company should be able to remove the vast majority of dumped vehicles from rivers 2 -72 hours after receiving a report from the public, although more complex retrievals may take longer than this”.
If you discover a dumped Lime bike in a river you can report it by taking a clear photo and giving a location reference using the what3words app or website. Reports need to be emailed to: london.ops@li.me
The service currently only applies to Lime bikes.
Canals
The wording in the article specifically mentioned rivers and seemed to avoid mention of bikes dumped in canals so we asked our ever helpful friend David Brough if he knew what the procedure was for canals. At first he was not aware if it was an issue in Hillingdon, but then he heard the following back from a contact at the Canal and River Trust:
“We certainly do have a large number of Lime bikes ending up in the canals, often in locks. At a point we had about 30 in the yard. Lime has operatives who go out and collect so we reached a local agreement with them to come and collect when we have a few in the yard”.
“We will generally remove the bikes from the water when we notice them or if they are reported to us by members of the public. We often have other e-scooters and e-bikes ending up in the canal, sometimes even petrol powered motorcycles so it can be quite an issue. We generally will have a few e-bikes in the Hillingdon area canals every month”.
If you spot a bike or anything else in a canal, it can be reported online using the form here, or by calling 0303 040 4040. Littering in canals in general seems to be a huge problem, you can read more about it here.