Colorful rental bikes are popping up all over Miami-Dade and while it can be convenient to have a bicycle available anytime and anywhere, some residents say they can also be a nuisance.
The bikes are all over town, green and yellow and offered by a company named Lime Bike in southwest Miami-Dade. They're blue in the City of Miami and orange bikes by another company called Spin in Doral and Miami Lakes.
Miami Lakes Mayor Manny Cid says the town joined the national dockless bike-sharing trend in December of last year with 6,000 bike users, hoping to promote health and alleviate traffic.
"In our community we have something called complete streets and we’re trying to change the focus of being car-centric to looking at pedestrian and bicyclists trying to have a holistic approach and this is part of it," Cid said.
But apparently some Miami Lakes residents have complained that the bikes are sometimes left way too long in the middle of a road or a property and get in the way of pedestrians.
"I have seen them in front of homes, on sidewalks, gas stations, parks," resident Zuleyka Grass said.
"We have received some complaints on that end and have been very proactive," Cid said. "We just received a grant and we built a bike rack at parks and implemented a program to work with home owners associations to place bike racks in the communities."
Local
Down in southwest Miami-Dade, near Bird Road and 114th Avenue, there was another situation with Lime Bike. Miami-Dade Transit confirmed to NBC 6 that residents have complained about the yellow and green bikes parked by bus stops and in front of homes are left there way too long, sometimes piling up.
But Miami-Dade Transit says Lime Bike is an independent company and the county is not responsible for maintenance of the bikes.
