The frontages of our cities’ hotels, and other parts of these cities, are being blighted with discarded rentable bicycles.
I am not the first to claim these are eyesores.
Can we assume most are returned to their docking stations in the correct, upright manner? Perhaps we only notice them when they are thrown down horizontally on the pavement, or are pushed that way, for some odd reason, after the renter has long gone.
This photo — taken outside my office building, which does not contain a hotel but does a co-working space — shows five bikes left in positions I believe would not be nice viewing to the bikes’ owners, and there are three different brands among them.
One would not leave their own bike like this outside the home, so why do it in front of someone else’s?
Maybe the business that stands opposite a place where a bike is discarded should have responsibility to at least stand them upright, and I am sure hoteliers would act immediately so as not to have the front of their hotels all a clutter.
In New York City, there are concerns about these bikes, too. But dedicated and crafty New Yorkers have discovered a money-making opportunity with dedicated riders racing each other to return as many bikes as possible to official collection areas. They earn money for this, and there is even a league ladder. According to The New York Times, an actor leads the “contest,” and it also claims riders can make $6,000 a month.
This might not be possible in London. Maybe because the business model and/or algorithm is different, or because we’re cheap.
Perhaps we’d rather just see them lying horizontally everywhere, some oblique art form and comment on post-COVID-19 Europe?
In London, police are fining riders for adapting their electric bikes — another two-wheel menace — to go faster than the legal speed for such machines, which is 15.5 miles per hour.
I run to work, so goodness knows what dangers I pose to innocent pedestrians and bystanders? In my former days of fitness, I could run 10 mph, so not much slower than those electrified monstrosities.
Cities are looking at the problem — the bikes, not the runners — but these things take time, I am sure.
Thinking about this on the way home to the train station, I realized that rarely if ever any more does one see those silly segway things. Were they ever popular?
They still exist as a transportation option, but they are prohibited from being ridden on the pavement/sidewalk, so maybe they are deemed too dangerous for London, unless it is around one of our beautiful parks, which might well have their own by-laws about such things?
There is absolutely nothing wrong in my opinion with normal bicycles, which allow you to see a city at a manageable and absorbable pace.
Many hotels allow guests to borrow them, and they are returned and stored correctly.
London might not be the safest city for their use either, its streets being narrow and often confusing.
By the way, walking is good!
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