Lime Bikes and Other Public Bike Hire Schemes

Quite a few cities now have public bike hire schemes, where bikes are accessed from a dock on the street like the Boris Bikes in London. Dockless e-bike schemes are also becoming increasingly common around the UK. One of the things that using these kinds of hire schemes requires is some local navigational knowledge.

Obviously, these days a lack of local navigational knowledge can be overcome with the aid of a smartphone and Google Maps, but that does require you to keep stopping to check your phone to make sure that you are heading in the right direction. All that stopping and starting can really start to add to your journey time though. A reasonable network of safe routes, or at least streets that aren’t too hostile for cycling on, is also really a requirement for these schemes to be useful.

Having recently used one of the Lime bikes in London I found them to be a bit of an experience. They seemed to be much easier to get access to when you turn up than Boris bikes, hiring one is app based so you don’t need to deal with a machine like a parking meter in the street. I was a bit surprised by the power, and the fact that they are single speed. Just one gear means that there is less to go wrong, and having electrical assistance makes single speed a practical option.

They also only have one power setting, which seems to be equivalent to the flat out, eveything it’s got, setting that you don’t use much on the e-bike that you might have at home. The downside of having a single speed and single power level is that speeds at which they work best are quite high. The result is that you get a swift cycling speed for a very pedestrian level of effort, and being a quicker alternative to walking is probably what they are really aimed at.

However, they do seem to be quite well suited to riding around at about 20 to 25 kph I would guess. This is a good speed for riding in UK cities where riding with traffic is inevitable, and they will get to that speed very quickly. A downside of them being fairly basic and robust bikes is that the brakes seemed a bit inadequate for something with their weight, power, and speed.