'I want them crushed' The e-bike backlash and why one council is ready to ban them

Coming out of Wembley Park tube station, it is hard not be dazzled by the flashy high-rises and looming stadium.

- Sammy Gecsoyler

Were it not for the B&M store, you could mistake the northwest London neighbourhood for a buzzy district in Tokyo or Seoul.

But as you walk down the station stairs, reality sets in. Lime e-bikes, which can be rented through an app and have become ubiquitous in the capital, litter the pavements. Some are upright but just as many are tossed on their side.

This may not be the case for long.

On 31 October, Brent could become the first council in the UK to ban the green two-wheelers. "Look! That's what we're talking about," says Muhammed Butt, the leader of Brent council, pointing at a cluster of Lime e-bikes by the station.

He has drafted a list of demands that the company must agree to if it is to avoid a Halloween ban.

These include the introduction of dedicated parking bays, resources to remove incorrectly parked or abandoned bikes and larger fines for users who fail to leave their e-bikes in the correct location.

Butt is not alone in his frustration with the San Francisco-based company, which operates in more than 230 cities around the world. In London, there are an estimated 30,000 rental bikes on the city's streets. Lime owns and operates the majority of them.

A number of councils have already mandated parking bays for e-bikes after mounting complaints that they are abandoned on pavements and roads. Disability and sight-loss charities have said the bikes are making London's pavements less accessible.

Last year, Met officers were called to a lock-up in Hammersmith and Fulham after Lime hired contractors to snatch back bikes that the council had seized. The council's leader, Stephen Cowan, later said things had been "sorted".