They are everywhere to trip over.

Many call them, appropriately, Litter Bikes.

My name is Jim Ford and I am the Director of Traffic for the Burlingame Police Department. I have forwarded your input about Lime Bikes to the Sustainability Coordinator at City Hall.

Director Of Traffic assigned this issue to Sustainability Coordinator

Thank you. If they are in someone's yard or clearly blocking the sidewalk then what is the recourse? Can private citizens request the city to impound these? What is the current legal standing for any items blocking the sidewalk or put on a private lawn without the owner's permission? Until the time the city passes and code / rules, what is the existing structure to deal with this? Or do we all wait until Lime and similar companies come to some good solution - in the end - but go unpunished / un-reprimanded for all this time that they are creating a nuisance for at least some of the public?
Is there a mechanism to file a formal complaint at the City Hall with a fixed period of redressal where it cannot be put off indefinitely until for profit corporations are able to figure something out?

Thank you, Jim! Is there a formal mechanism to have correspondence with the Sustainability Coordinator at City Hall?

I would encourage you contact Sustainability Coordinator Sigalle Michael at smichael@burlingame.org. He would know more about Burlingame's policy and formal complaint procedure. As far as enforcement, the Burlingame Police Department continues to monitor the bikes and will take action if the bike is a hazard (bike in the middle of the street) or stolen off the street.

Great!
Thank you again!

Good one. But fhey make some scowhackos Feel Good. ALTRUISM DOES NOT WORK

Hello,
I'm Sigalle Michael, the City's Sustainability Coordinator. We are currently in a 6-month pilot program with LimeBike, our bike sharing program provider. LimeBike is a dockless program, meaning bikes can be left wherever riders take them and are not restricted to a docking station. This allows for great flexibility, however, it requires users to park the bikes responsibly - never on private property and never blocking pedestrian accessibility.

As our Police Department noted above, the Police Department takes action when bikes are a hazard. Luckily, no bikes have been impounded in Burlingame. We direct most complaints to LimeBike who are required by their agreement to respond in a timely manner. We have seen the number of complaints decrease over the last few months as people better understand the program and parking by users improve.

We appreciate all comments on the program which will be considered in the program's evaluation. Formal comments on the bike program can be sent directly to me at smichael@burlingame.org.

No encroacment permit but business owners have to pay to get one? But it Feels Good :-) Who is driving this sustainibility effort anyway? It seems to be a priority over common sense values and is costing us jobs.

Thank you for your response, Sigalle. I really appreciate it.
A decrease in the number of complaints is by no means a perfect measure of compliance by users and the provider even in an indirect sense. People sometimes just get tired of complaining if the thing they are complaining about it not a significantly harmful phenomenon. In this case, the general whining by people like me might reduce but you will perhaps only see a complaint by a motivated citizen who actually tripped over the bike. It might be down from a hundred complaints in a month to a few with one being by the person who tripped over - but that does not necessarily mean that users have become more compliant overall. There will still be a small percentage of people (as is the case with everything!) who will still leave their Lime Bikes carelessly on the sidewalk or on someone's lawn. It is the sustained monitoring and complaint redressal that will become the focus of your work eventually.
One question - what defines "timely manner" - is it a few hours, one day? Because just like we all know - a car break in takes less than ten minutes - it will take little time for someone to get hurt over a carelessly placed bike if it is left there for just long enough. Lime Bike might think they are doing a great job of picking up strewn bikes but whom are they relying on for reporting such bikes? Is it active surveillance by them or passive?
These are important questions and I hope someone else is asking them too and the City and Lime Bike (and other such programs) are diligently doing their best to make it less of a nuisance and more of what it is intended to be - a fantastic, modern day mobility paradigm.

By the way, those two bikes at the station were still there when I saw yesterday. Hence the question about timely manner. We don't want to overburden our parking enforcement but if these bikes get away on a technicality ("not blocking x,y,z"), then for how long can we expect them to just sit there? Until another user rents that bike?