London Part 2: The Regulatory and Operator Landscape
Lime is the leader in London. Voi and Forest have taken significant leaps in this direction. How are these operators tackling parking crisis?
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Contents:
Recap on London Part 1
London’s parking crisis
The operators
Santander Cycles
Chart: Santander Ridership 2013-2024
Lime
Chart: Lime UK Revenue vs Net Result (2019-2024)
Forest
Voi
A unique market for a unique city
Recap on London Part 1
In the first part of our series about London’s micromobility scene, we looked at the history and future of the sector in the region. What we found was a city and a sector that shape one another; and this is a theme that also runs through today’s piece.
Throughout this article, we’re going to be focusing on the regulatory and competitor landscape in London. To put that a different way, while the first part of this series is about how the past influences the future of micromobility in England’s capital, today we’re taking a good hard look at precisely what’s going on.
So let’s get into it.
The layout of London: An invisible influence
One of the most important elements to consider when thinking about micromobility in London is the sheer scale of the city and how it’s divided. London consists of 32 local boroughs and the City of London Corporation, with each of these areas having a separate local highway authority. Effectively, London is not that joined up.
There is some oversight, with the Mayor of London, Transport for London (TfL), and the Greater London Authority (GLA) having a range of strategic powers that can influence how people move around the city, but it’s the boroughs that look after the local highways, as well as parking arrangements — both of which are of vital importance for micromobility.
What this amounts to is there’s no single, London-wide statutory licensing regime for dockless or shared bikes. Sure, TfL issues guidance (such as the Dockless Bike Share Code of Practice), but, typically, boroughs enter commercial concession agreements with operators to set local rules, such as the number of vehicles allowed, parking requirements, and service standards. This is most commonly done on an individual basis, not as a broad policy that sweeps across the entire city.
This disparity is the lens through which London’s micromobility scene is read through, and is a vital key in understanding how the city operates. In some senses, micromobility in London isn’t the story of one city, it’s the story of 32 boroughs.
London’s parking crisis
If there’s one element that dominates London’s issue with shared micromobility, it’s parking. It doesn’t take long to find complaints about e-scooters or e-bikes littering the streets of the capital — but things have improved, and will continue to do so.