Why are there so many Santander bikes available?
It’s because there are so may electric bikes for hire. There were e-scooters but they seem to have fallen out of favour with local authorities and are widely disliked by pedestrians.
These are the ones I saw on a short walk this morning. Have I ever riden one? Absolutely not. One of my great nieces has tried one once and found it scary. Riders seldom/never wear helmets and they go like a bat out of hell she says if you are not a frequent two-wheeler. In fact I don’t think she had been on a bike since she discarded her trike. Next time, dear g-niece, there is a setting on the Lime app for beginners that limits the speed to 8 mph.
The Santander cycles are heavy, I tried them ages ago when they were sponsored by some other company that got poor value as they were universally call Boris bikes. They are not electric yet they use docking stations. This is so yesterday’s technology. But you wonder how electric bikes get their batteries charged when they are strewn around all over the place? It would make sense for them to use a docking station where the battery could recharge. Well, maybe not, as it takes 3 1/2 hours for a Lime bike battery to recharge.
The e-bike companies are able to monitor battery levels through the app – don’t ask me how – and when the level gets low they take the bike out of service until an operative, called a juicer, turns up to replace the battery and take the flat one for a recharge. This is called harvesting. But I suppose you knew all that.