Transport for London is spending about £1million providing designated parking spaces for dockless e-bikes and e-scooters.
But the initiative - which includes 7,500 spaces on council roads and 800 alongside Red Routes - comes with a warning that firms such as Lime and Forest will be fined if their customers do not leave the bikes and scooters in the correct place.
TfL could also seize abandoned bikes and even take bike firms to court, but says any crackdown will be “proportionate and pragmatic”.
It comes as a third company, Voi, confirmed plans to put thousands of e-bikes on the streets of London in the first half of 2025.
There are already more than 30,000 dockless e-bikes in the capital, and about 12,000 of TfL’s “Boris bikes”, which have to be left at docking stations.
The number of Londoners hiring e-bikes has soared to millions of rides a year – but Mayor Sadiq Khan has voiced concerns that the lack of regulations has left many parts of central London like the “Wild West”, with abandoned bikes littering pavements and making them dangerous for pedestrians.
TfL now says it will create 800 designed bays along its Red Route network, including main roads such as Euston Road, Holloway Road and Tooting High Street, by next summer, and a total of 3,000 by the end of 2026.
At the same time, almost £1million has been allocated this year by TfL to boroughs to fund 7,500 new parking spaces.
The new bays be predominantly for e-bikes as the Government-backed e-scooter trial already requires the vehicles to be parked in existing bays.
TfL says it wants to help more Londoners to use the e-bikes and e-scooters safely – and to tackle issues caused by poor parking.
As TfL only controls five per cent of the capital’s roads, the initiative will have a limited impact on the ground – but could be a key indicator of what happens next in terms of wider regulation.
TfL says that on many Red Routes, rental e-bikes are often being parked on the pavement “in a way that negatively impacts pedestrian and wheelchair access”.
To keep the roads safe for all users, TfL has written to operators to ask them to collaborate on its new enforcement policy for e-bikes. TfL will also work closely with London councils to improve parking compliance.
Under the new policy, TfL will consider taking action against operators who allow their bikes to be parked outside of designated places on red routes and on TfL land, including station forecourts and bus garages.
TfL’s proposal, unveiled on Tuesday, is separate to wider hopes that TfL will be able to pave the way to a Londonwide set of rules for e-bikes and e-scooters, which would potentially set a minimum number of spaces per borough and a maximum number of bikes and scooters.
Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner, said: “Dockless e-bikes play an important role in encouraging more people to choose sustainable modes of transport when travelling around the capital, but we know that poor e-bike parking can cause significant safety issues for some Londoners, particularly disabled and older people.
“In some instances they have become obstacles for pedestrians particularly in busy parts of the capital.
“The mayor’s million-pound investment into additional parking spaces, in conjunction with this scheme to ensure that vehicles are parked responsibly, will make London safer and more accessible for everyone. I look forward to working with councils, as well as e-bike operators on these improvements."
Kieron Williams, London Councils executive member for transport, said: "Dockless e-bikes have the potential to be a major positive step forwards for London, but to work for our city they need to work for all Londoners.
“Whilst the large majority of people using the bikes do so with care and respect, we are still seeing far too many blocking pavements, roads and crossings.”
Clive Wood, from the charity Guide Dogs, said: “I hope operators will work with TfL to ensure the updated policy makes a difference”.
It came as Fredrik Hjelm, chief executive of Voi, which operates e-scooters in London under the TfL-approved hire scheme, said it would also make e-bikes available in the “first half” of next year.
However, Mr Hjelm declined to say exactly how many e-bikes would be available for hire - or which boroughs would be targeted.
Speaking to The Standard, Mr Hjelm, who was visiting the capital from Voi’s Stockholm HQ, said the e-scooter licence in London had been “so far, a big disappointment”.
He said: “We have a situation where e-scooters are over regulated when it comes to where you are allowed to ride them, where you are allowed to park them.”
He added: “E-scooters are over-regulated and there are way too few of them in London to be a good service.
“On the other side, e-bikes haven’t been regulated at all.”
He said he was keen to sign up to a wider “microbility” set of rules in London – covering both e-scooters and e-bikes, which he aimed to make available “in the first half of the year”.
Asked how many bikes Voi planned to put on the streets and whether a manufacturer had been found, Mr Hjelm said: “It’s still to be decided… how many we would put out.
“We have far north of 100,000 vehicles [e-scooters and e-bikes] out on the streets of Europe.”
Voi has e-bikes or e-scooters in 12 other cities including Liverpool and Southampton.
But Mr Hjelm said that, despite the presence of Lime, Forest and TfL’s docked “Boris bikes”, he expected demand for hire bikes to continue to grow in London.
But he said the lack of rules around the parking of the bikes was “unsustainable”, and referred to “cluttered streets with bikes lying all over”.
He added: “I don’t think the current situation, which is like the Wild Wild West, is long-term sustainable.”
He said London was the “very worst” of all cities that had e-bikes, in terms of its lack of regulations.
Asked if introducing thousands of Voi bikes would make the situation worse, Mr Hjelm said: “Not if we do it in a good way.”
He said the “key” was for TfL to offer e-bike operators the chance to bid for tenders that would require “geo-fenced” parking bays to be used – or the operators would be penalised. “Three is a good number [of dockless operators],” he said.
Last month, London mayor Sadiq Khan also described the lack of city-wide rules on dockless bikes being akin to the “Wild West”.
Speaking at mayor’s question time, he told Labour assembly member Elly Baker that TfL was “considering enforcement options on the roads for which it is the highway authority”.
He said that TfL had allocated funding to a number of boroughs – via their “local implementation plans” - to help them to design and introduce on-street parking bays
Mr Khan said: “These bays are physically marked on the ground as opposed to the ‘park anywhere’ of virtual bays which are visible only in rental apps. TfL is also planning the delivery of parking bays on its own network.
“In addition to this, in the absence of regulatory powers to manage rental e-bikes, TfL and London Councils are working closely with boroughs to explore whether a single approach to managing rental e-bike and e-scooter services could work.”
He said he was concerned that public opposition to dockless e-bikes and e-scooters could become “counterproductive” to efforts to encourage active travel.
“We are hoping councils and these companies are willing partners because we need a solution because what is happening now is not working,” he said.
