Rent-a-bikes might be allowed to pile up in pastel pyramids on the sidewalks of Dallas.

But in Highland Park? You know better.

The town's residents and elected officials have seen Dallas' brightly colored clutter stretch into their streets and sidewalks and parks, and they are not pleased. A new ordinance approved by the Town Council makes that abundantly clear, because rather than regulating the rental bikes that have been dropped by the thousands on Dallas in recent months, Highland Park's ordinance essentially outlaws them altogether.

Long ordinance short: Get those bikes out of town by nightfall or else.

Says the ordinance, which was adopted Dec. 11 but won't be enforced until next week, rent-a-bikes left overnight on public property will be impounded, and it will cost the bike-share companies big bucks to liberate their rides -- the price begins at $30 for the first bike, and goes up to $100 for the fourth and beyond. And if the two-wheelers are left in the town's possession for longer than 15 days, Highland Park will sell them to the highest bidder.

"They've become what I've dubbed the orphan bikes," said Bill Lindley, Highland Park's town administrator. "They get left here. We have asked the companies to voluntarily beef up their efforts to pick them up every day, [but] we've seen mixed results from those efforts. The council felt like adopting an ordinance with penalties would get their attention and force them to do a better job of collecting these bikes and taking them back to Dallas."

Dallas' City Council will consider regulating the five-and-counting bike share companies -- VBikes, Ofo, Spin, LimeBike and MoBikes -- that began rolling into the city in August. Plano, too, is looking to lay down some ground rules as bike-share makes its way north. It's likely their rules will be based, in part, on Seattle's regulations, which, among other things, force the companies to register their bikes with the city and limit the number of rentals they're allowed to leave.

And Lindley said Highland Park may eventually wind up scrapping its brand-new ordinance and following Dallas' lead. But it's no guarantee Dallas will do much of anything: Council members have been reluctant to clamp down on bike share in hopes that the marketplace will sort itself out. North Dallas' Lee Kleinman said last weekend that the Mobility Solutions, Infrastructure & Sustainability Committee, of which he is the chair, "will review the programs and consider regulation this spring."

Kleinman also said that when Dallas decided to allow bike-sharing sans regulations, neighboring cities were informed.

"And I have yet to hear of regulation cropping up," he said.

But as it turns out, Highland Park did complain to Dallas City Hall.

On Nov. 20, Lindley sent a letter to City Manager T.C. Broadnax asking Dallas to help with operating and managing its dockless bike program, which the city doesn't oversee so much as allow. Lindley wrote that he'd been asking for help from Broadnax's staff, but had yet to hear back. The tone of his missive was one of frustration.

"While possibly an exciting and fun entrepreneurial adventure for the dockless bike companies and Dallas, the impact to our town has been anything but that," Lindley wrote to his Dallas counterpart. "Resident complaints and the demand on our employees to police the haphazard scattering of bikes throughout our community by the companies' patrons take away from accomplishing the work of the Town."

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Lindley said Friday he has since spoken with Majed Al-Ghafry, the assistant city manager in Dallas who oversees transportation, and has been assured that Dallas will work with the Park Cities as everyone struggles to survive bike-share's growing pains.

The bikes are coming in from Dallas -- most, Lindley said, ridden by visitors who hop on the Katy Trail, get off at Knox-Henderson and wind their way through the Park Cities. Some, too, may be coming from SMU: In October, Garland-based VBikes announced it was the university's official bike-share partner.

Lindley said that when bike-share debuted in Dallas in August, it became an instant problem for Highland Park: Residents started complaining about bikes being left in front yards and along sidewalks and near park playgrounds, and staff had to go collect the things and store them at a locked service center. They had become, the town administrator said, "urban litter."

The number of bikes fell off as the weather cooled down, and in the fall Highland Park officials met with the companies about picking up their rentals at the end of every day. When they were slow to act, Lindley said, the Town Council took action.

"We understand people will ride the bikes and leave them in Highland Park," he said. "We're part of a larger community. But we're seeing them left six, seven, eight days. We want to be a good neighbor. We want to be a partner. We're just asking the companies to be a good neighbor and pick them up."