No, you're not imagining it — there are fewer of those lite-brite buck-an-hour bikes littering Dallas' sidewalks today than there were a few months ago. Where there were some 20,000 yellow and green and orange and gray tumped-over two-wheelers strewn between your Here and There only months ago, city officials say today that number's more like 13,000. Guess it depends on whether we're counting the ones at the bottom of the Trinity River and White Rock Lake.

What I'm saying is LimeBike, Ofo, Mobike, Spin and VBikes are doing a better job of cleaning up the mess they started making last summer. And the city's doing a better job of making them, with an assist from Downtown Dallas Inc., which recently planted a few new bike racks and painted a few new corrals in the city center.

The growing pains don't hurt as much 10 months later.

All that's left now is for the Dallas City Council to finally pass rules of the road for the so-called dockless vehicles — which may or may not include electric scooters, depending on what the council does about lifting the ordinance that outlaws "motor-assisted" rides on public property. (The council sounds slightly more yay than nay, especially when it comes to sidewalk use. But I do hope they make them legal, because I'll be honest: I look and feel like a yutz on one of those things, which I test-drove this week, but at least I don't sweat like I've sprung a leak.)

The council is close to passing something, finally: There was a briefing on the long-awaited dockless vehicle ordinance Wednesday, with a vote scheduled in three weeks. And for the most part, a majority of the council liked it — especially the part that charges the bike-share companies about $800 for a permit and $18 per bike, which will raise enough cash to fund four people to enforce the rules. They'll also have to post a $5,000 bond in case they go out of business.

Those new rules, which the council will tinker with before the final vote, force the companies to share ridership data with City Hall — the to and fro, times of day and numbers of vehicles in service. The proposed ordinance limits how long a bike can sit in one place (two days in a neighborhood, seven days everywhere else). And where they can be parked (not on narrow sidewalks or trails or near ADA ramps). And how long a bike can be on its side until it's considered a violation (two hours).

There are still some questions and a few sticking points — like, say, Kevin Felder, Fair Park's council member, wants to double that performance bond to $10,000. And Adam Medrano is worried the out-of-towners will put homegrown bike businesses — especially Deep Ellum's Local Hub Bicycle Company — out of business. And Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway still wants docked bikes, too, which Dallas doesn't have because it would cost the city millions.

But we're close. Thank the lord and Eddy Merckx.

"They treated our city like a warehouse," said council member Mark Clayton, who heard plenty of complaints from constituents who hated the clutter around White Rock Lake. This proposed ordinance, he said, "gives us what we want."

Yes, bike share was a mess when it started, with companies trying to choke each other out of the market. But they had plenty of help. The city of Dallas did a good job making bike share unpleasant because we don't have the infrastructure to accommodate it.

Ticked about people riding their rentals on downtown sidewalks? I don't blame you: At least once a day I'm tailed by some would-be Alberto Contador straddling a rental. But that's on the city, which does nothing to enforce its no-riding-on-downtown-sidewalks law. Besides, I can't really blame the cyclists: The city has essentially forced riders into pedestrian right of way because it feels far safer than sharing a lane with motorists who think it's OK to steer into crosswalks full of people.

Jared White, the transportation planner who's serving as Dallas' de facto bike czar, told me Wednesday we have a whopping 19 miles of buffered bike lanes in this city — including the single striped lanes along Bishop Avenue and the separated ones in Victory Park. There are also 45 miles of shared lanes — which don't really count, because they're just an emblem painted onto a lane already used by cars.

That's a mighty long way from the 840 miles of on-street facilities we were promised in the 2011 Dallas Bike Plan, a number arrived at only after numerous max-capacity public meetings populated mostly by people who rode their bikes to get there.

"We're a little behind," White deadpanned Wednesday.

1 / 3A broken Spin rental bike rests in the grass near the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge along the Trinity Skyline Trail on Tuesday.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer) 2 / 3A pedestrian walks around a fallen rental bike at the corner of Harwood and Elm Streets in downtown Dallas.(Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer) 3 / 3Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway tried out several of Dallas' rental bikes during a meeting in his office on Feb. 7, 2018.(Robert Wilonsky / Staff writer)

This city pours a whopping $500,000 a year into its bike-lane program. And at this rate, "we will literally never complete the on-street bike facilities," council member and bike-share fan Philip Kingston said. He wants $2 million in the budget every year, which would get us 40 miles of buffered lanes every year.

So enough with fretting over cheap bikes or electric scooters. We need bike lanes. And we need them now. Let's ride.