Orlando is now painting parking boxes for its new ‘dockless’ bikeshare system

In a moment of utter self-defiance, the City of Orlando has begun painting parking boxes across downtown to remind citizens where to park their “dockless” Lime bikes – yes, dockless – when they’re finished riding.

Kind of defeats the point, right?

Not quite, according to Karyn Barber, a spokesperson for the city.

“In an effort to accommodate our bicyclists, enhance our dockless bike sharing options and maintain orderly rights-of-way, the City of Orlando Transportation Department will be creating additional bike parking through a combination of taped/painted boxes, the new concrete pads and the installation of new bike racks,” Barber says in an email.

She adds: “There is no penalty for not parking in the designated spaces. The new additions to bike parking are part of the city’s ongoing efforts to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety.”

In October, city officials approved an ordinance that ushered in a new era of citywide micro-mobility, opening up the city’s roads – and, technically, its sidewalks too – to the electric bicycle and scooter rental company Lime.

We’ve written about the bikes before. In fact, earlier today we published a cover story that takes a deeper dive into the local micro-mobility craze.

You can read it here.

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This article appears in Jan 16-22, 2019.