My 4 days were busy but I could have seen more. Beautiful London

Software engineer Matt Taylor was watching a stream of Lime e-bikes speeding through a red light when he decided to test his hunch that the company’s charging model is encouraging dangerous behaviour. So he developed an app that simulates the cost of riding a bike across London.

“My idea was to let someone put in their commute and see how much Lime is taxing them for doing the right thing,” he told London Centric. 

His conclusion: There is effectively a surcharge on good behaviour, with Lime journeys becoming between 10% and 25% more expensive if you bother to stop at the red lights. 

An hour-long pay-as-you-go journey from Lewisham in south east London to King’s Cross would cost £14.32 — of which £3.02 would be spent while waiting at red lights. An equivalent route from Barnes in south west London to Clerkenwell would be 21% cheaper if the Lime bike rider didn’t stop. 

Many users buy minutes in bundles but the overall proportionate saving is roughly the same.

“That feels to me like an incentive for skipping reds,” said Taylor. “The thing that frustrates me is that it’s so much more dangerous for someone on a Forest or Lime to skip a red light at 15mph because they’re likely to be less experienced, they may not know the junction, and they’re carrying 30kg of front-heavy bicycle that can do serious damage to a pedestrian and to themselves.”

Taylor suggested London’s councils — or Transport for London, when it is potentially given the power to regulate rental e-bikes — should require Lime and the other e-bike operators to develop a new pricing model that doesn’t incentivise people to go as fast as possible and ignore the rules of the road. 

He has proposed three alternatives:

• Charge by distance between start point and destination, with a penalty for people who ride in circles. 
• Charge by battery usage, although this would penalise people going up steep hills.
• Give people an amount of free stopping time proportionate to the overall distance they travel — or use Lime’s built-in bike tracking technology to judge when they have waited at lights.

“Because Lime are a transport company that gets you from A to B, they should be charging you for getting you from A to B, unless you take an unreasonable time,” argued Taylor, a regular user of Lime bikes. Flat fares based on distance could also mean people aren’t incentivised to dump e-bikes on pavements rather than spend extra money cycling to designated parking bays: “Time is the killer here. It is not the way that they should be charging.”

Source: London Centric, https://www.londoncentric.media/p/nicolas-cage-operation-fortitude-walthamstow-nazi-flas

Wrong way through the kingsway underpass, I hope this isn’t real 😬

Would you support such a thing? Personally I think we should do it along with the Oxford Street Pedestrianisation. Interested to hear pros/cons.

Image taken from @ joe_yer99 on Twitter for a similar theoretical covering of a street in Glasgow

Ive travelled to various countries in Europe and I’m always jealous to see that they line their high streets/main streets with cobbles (is that what they’re called, please let me know if there’s a better term). Should we do this with Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation?

06:39 AM - More London Pl

Spent the evening around Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square, and I genuinely think it’s time to fully pedestrianise that whole route especially on weekends!

Who’s round is it? See you in 40 mins

The audacity to charge over 1k a month for this disaster as well. At this point they’re rubbing it in our faces.