| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Katherine Dunne's ridiculously expensive e-bike policy | |
| Posted by: | Mark Evans | |
| Date/Time: | 10/03/26 08:42:00 |
| You can still cycle from Chiswick (Hounslow) into Ealing (including Acton Green and Bedford Park) if you can find a Voi bike. The interesting thing about the ejection of Forest is that it was kept very quiet. I tried to hire a bike about ten days ago on The Avenue where I could normally pick one up but there was none available. Finding a free bike was always a bit hit and miss and I don't use the service very often so didn't think much of it. There was no message from Forest that I could find so it wasn't until the article in the newsletter that I realised that they were no longer available in Ealing. The rationale from Ealing is not unsound at first glance - there are only so many designated parking spaces and bays for bikes so they need to limit the number of bikes available for hire in the borough. Otherwise they proliferate and cause a hazard. However they didn't really think this through as all that has happened is that it has concentrated the parking of these bikes at borough boundaries leading to the blocking of pavements around Acton Green Common and St. Michael's Church and I presume there are similar issues at other border points. It took a week for this story to be picked up so obviously Forest, unlike Lime, didn't want to make a big deal of it, in the hope of getting back into Ealing when the existing MOU expires. In the meantime the sensible thing for Ealing to do would be to extend the operating area of Forest to the whole W4 post code. Voi doesn't have the machines to meet the demand that the current monopoly they have has delivered to them. |