Dallas Sends Warning to Bike-Sharing Vendors
Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax has put bike-sharing companies on notice.
Vendors must do a better job of managing their fleets or city employees may begin removing the bikes, he says in a letter dated Thursday.
The town of Highland Park adopted the area’s first bike-sharing regulation in December.
The town’s ordinance followed several complaints of bikes being left behind for days, littering the area.
Frequent concerns included broken or vandalized bikes as well as ones left blocking sidewalks, piled on landscaping, or heavily clustered in parks and along trails.
Highland Park’s ordinance prohibits placement of bikes for rent in the town and provides for impoundment of those left by a vendor or its customers. Vendors could face fees of up to $100 per bike, and bikes not picked up after 15 days could be auctioned off.
University Park officials are expected to begin a discussion about the orphaned bikes in February.
In Broadnax’s letter to the bike share operations, he noted that despite meeting with the companies in early December about some of the nuisances, “the city has not seen much improvement in bicycle fleet management, and the situation continues to deteriorate.”
See the text of the letter below:
