The night belongs to Lime bikes in the capital this summer. Buses and tube carriages are boiling, cars crawl between low traffic neighbourhoods and Thames Water roadworks, and pedestrians plod through the sticky heat. But Lime riders exist in a different, breezier realm: whirring along, chatting in pairs or blissfully alone, weaving through the city’s tree-lined maze, choosing impulsively between destinations, rarely stopping for anything or anyone.

“My favourite part of a night out is Lime biking home,” writes Annie Lord, a dating columnist and author, in Freewheeling: Essays on Cycling. “As I ride up a hill, the bike’s electrics click … And, for a little while, I’m free.”

According to the confidently expansive Californian company that owns Lime, Neutron Holdings Inc, the average age of its London riders is 34. With the capital’s weather becoming warmer and drier, and social media and other online sources making more information about things riders could do instantly available, rented e-bikes seem a perfect tool to unlock the city’s possibilities. Across the globe, they are changing urban life: speeding it up, connecting previously out-of-the-way places, and making many women feel safer at night. Where I live in Hackney, once one of the capital’s more isolated boroughs and now one of the busiest Lime markets, many pubs are enjoying a bike-driven boom on summer nights, with the bright green bikes glowing outside like lurid cocktails before their riders wobble home.

Yet since Limes became available in London and other British cities in 2018, the narrative has focused on their negative impacts. The way........

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