Lime will double the number of bikes available to rent in Seattle, but says the long-term viability of the service depends on whether city officials also allow its scooter-share program to operate.
The company confirmed to GeekWire that it plans to have 1,000 JUMP bikes in Seattle by the end of August, and 2,000 by this fall. That’s nearly the size of the fleet that was in circulation before bike-share services disappeared from city streets earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lime began re-deploying a small fleet of bikes in Seattle in June, following the company’s acquisition of JUMP, which was previously owned and operated by Uber. Over the next few weeks, Lime will be ramping up its fleet of JUMP bikes in Seattle under the expectation that a scooter pilot will launch soon.
The economics of dockless bike-share have never quite penciled out, as graveyards of discarded bicycles around the world show. Lime believes it can still operate bike-share in Seattle and other cities, but only if it can also rent more profitable electric scooters to offset losses.
Last year, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan pledged to launch a scooter-share pilot this spring in the city but the process has become bogged down by bureaucratic hurdles and other municipal priorities. Durkan’s office did not respond to questions about when the scooter pilot is expected to launch.
“We want to see JUMP bikes here in 10 years,” said Jonathan Hopkins, Lime’s director of strategic development. “We want to see JUMP bikes here in 20 years, but there’s no way to do that if it’s operating at a loss.”
Operating a shared bike costs two to three times as much as a scooter, but bikes are rented about one-third as often, according to Hopkins. Bikes also cost more to maintain and take up more storage space in the vans and trucks used to pull them off streets for servicing.
“That’s not to say that bikes aren’t good,” Hopkins said. “They’re extraordinarily good. They’re essential in the city because we have hills and some people like to ride bikes, some people like to ride scooters. We do need them here. They are a public benefit. We can make the economics work when they’re paired with scooters.”
One of Durkan’s top priorities for the scooter-share pilot is safety. Reports indicate that scooter-related injuries are on the rise, particularly among riders who don’t wear helmets. Hopkins said that should add urgency to the pilot launch because it will allow riders to learn to use scooters when there is more light and dry weather.
The Seattle Department of Transportation and cycling advocates have warned that scooters could make bike-share less appealing. In 2018, scooter ridership surpassed bike-share nationally for the first time and many mobility companies are prioritizing scooters over bikes.
JUMP bikes are currently available for rent in the Lime app and they will also be rentable through Uber’s app in the coming weeks, Hopkins said. In addition to Seattle, Lime operates bike-share in Denver and Washington D.C. It plans to add JUMP bikes to more cities this year. Lime’s original green bikes are no longer in operation.
Lime says bike-share is safer than riding public transportation because COVID-19 is more likely to be transferred from person-to-person than from surfaces, per CDC guidance. The company uses CDC-recommended products to sanitize bikes regularly and advises riders to wash their hands after trips.
Lime and Uber announced they would join forces in May as both companies suffered blows from the pandemic. Uber led a $170 million investment round in Lime and agreed to hand its JUMP bike-share business over to the micro-mobility upstart. The announcement came amid thousands of layoffs at Uber.
