Lime scooters, bikes to return next week

Lime scooters and bikes will be back on Spokane streets – and, against the rules, sidewalks – starting March 13.

The smartphone-activated modes of personal, electric transportation arrived in the Lilac City for a two-month trial in fall 2018 and were an immediate hit. Users rode 128,000 miles in a 73-day period, offering people a new way to get from here to there.

Last March, they returned. By the time they were removed Nov. 17, Spokane residents and visitors had ridden the scooters and bicycles more than 581,000 times for a total of 643,000 miles.

A July survey of Lime users found that nearly 24% of people used Lime in place of a motor vehicle. If this share of users held true for the entire year, Lime vehicles replaced about 160,000 miles of car driving.

The survey also found the average age of a Lime rider is 36, with 1 in 4 riders older than 45, and that about 90% of the survey respondents live, work or go to school in Spokane.

Lime offers the scooters through the city of Spokane’s WheelShare program, which collected $90,000 in fees from scooter and bike users over the course of 2019.

That money will be used to build on-street infrastructure for scooter users and bicyclists as well as enforce existing laws about not riding on the sidewalk, riding two or more people per scooter and underage riding.