Homelessness is a serious subject, especially in a city like London. The assumption that the homeless masses all have access to a powerbank, or a wall socket in one of the cities most notorious for class boundaries, is rather coarse.. perhaps you might at least think of it as more of a survival device for those who are using their bicycles to get far, far away from the grid ..

Plenty of locations that used to be BT phone boxes were replaced with pillars featuring WiFi and USB charging. Is this not pretty widespread?

This device seems a bit.. daft. Renting a Santander cycle costs 1.65 GBP. Add the high energy food required to supplement your diet after a 30 minute ride and this is looking closer to 3 or 4 quid for a phone charge, and that's before considering where the homeless person is going to securely stow their belongings while cycling. Luggage storage in Victoria is 5 GBP for 3 hours..

You don't have to pay to rent the bike. The homeless person attaches the devices and then peddles on it stationary in the dock.

It is illegal to use a socket without permission and there aren't that many sockets accessible outdoor.

“So how did you end up here in prison?”

“I was charging my phone :(“

The fact is that this is an offence [1]

It does not help homeless people or anyone to suggest they should break the law.

This device that uses bike chains is a bit cheeky but it is a smart idea and it should be legal, or at least not a crime (ianal). So nice, clever hack.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstracting_electricity

I for one live in fear of the storm trooper squads that come after you plug your charger into an unattended wall socket.

In my major Northeast US city, there are wall sockets on the outside of most buildings (if you know where to look), on every car of the subway/bus, in public concourses, etc.

Yet, Isn't using them w/o permission illegal?

From the article:

"While most homeless people own a phone, Talbot conducted interviews with people sleeping rough across London and found that many struggle with finding a place where they can actually charge the device."

So apparently at least part of the homeless disagree with you.

Most places that are available to you and me aren't necessarily available to homeless people and some modern cities are getting more and more hostile architecture built to make life harder for homeless people.

It might be a niche thing (it's a gradschool project after all), but it's pretty cool way to exploit things that are not supposed to be available for use.

Not my experience in London tbh. It’s hard to find a power outlet somewhere that you don’t need to pay some sum of money to spend time in. Which makes it a problem for the homeless.