In an unanimous vote of approval on Wednesday afternoon, Vancouver City Council unanimously formally approved a long-term contract for Lime to finance, launch, and operate the City of Vancouver’s public e-scooter share service.
This follows City of Vancouver staff’s recommendation of selecting Lime following an extensive procurement process that attracted bids from Vancouver Bike Share (the operator of Vancouver’s existing comprehensive Mobi bike share system), Bird Rides, Neuron Mobility, and VeoRide.
During today’s public meeting, City staff provided fine details on how Lime will launch its services and expand across Vancouver over time.
This will be North America’s first completely docked e-scooter share system, requiring riders to start their trip by using the Lime smartphone app to unlock the device from a parking station and end their trip by returning and locking the device at a station. This is completely different from Lime’s free-floating e-scooter system around the world to mitigate the safety and clutter issues of devices improperly left on sidewalks and other public spaces.
During the procurement process, City staff required bids to include proposals for locking docking parking stations, which necessitated Lime to create a unique “Made for Vancouver” solution.
Artistic rendering of Lime’s e-scooter share locking docking parking stations and devices for Vancouver. (Lime)
City staff also noted that Lime will launch their initial service in Vancouver in late summer 2024, but not in a central, high-density location of the city, as would typically be expected.
City staff stated today that Lime wants to make large areas of the Grandview-Woodland and Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhoods — the northeast corner of Vancouver — as their first service area later this summer, starting with an initial deployment of 29 stations and 100 devices. This limited launch in a lower-density residential area — which is deemed to be undeserved by public transit and other shared services — will provide the company with the ability to learn and test the system before expanding to high-density neighbourhoods.
The first station will be installed in August 2024 for initial system testing needs.
Lime’s e-scooter share phased service expansion in Vancouver from Summer 2024 to 2025. (Lime)
From the northeast corner of Vancouver, Lime will expand westwards.
The second phase expansion areas will cover the Downtown Eastside, Strathcona, False Creek Flats, Olympic Village, and Mount Pleasant.
The third phase expansion will reach the downtown Vancouver peninsula, which could occur by Winter 2025.
This would then be followed by subsequent expansions to False Creek South, Kitsilano, Fairview, and other areas of East Vancouver.
Over the initial five-year period, Lime would gradually expand across Vancouver. The ultimate size of Lime’s citywide e-scooter share service could reach up to 1,042 stations and 5,000 devices.
City staff note that there is no firm expansion timeline, as the growth of the e-scooter share network will depend on ridership performance.
Lime’s e-scooter share phased service expansion in Vancouver over five years starting in Summer 2024. (Lime)
Upon launch, the initial fees for Lime’s Vancouver e-scooter share service will be:
- Pay as you go: $1.25 unlock fee, plus $0.39 per minute.
- Tourist Day Pass: $3.99 with free unlocks and 30 minutes of riding over one day.
- Weekend Pass: $7.99 with free unlocks and 60 minutes of riding over three days.
- Commuter 5-Day Pass: $14.99 with free unlocks and 120 minutes of riding over five days.
- Monthly Pass: $32.99 with 300 minutes of riding over 30 days.
- Annual Pass: $135 with free unlocks and $0.15 per minute on all rides up to 30 minutes over 365 days.
There will also be free and/or discounted pass programs for low-income and other groups, with a target of supporting “2,000 equity members.”
In accordance to bylaws, e-scooter devices can generally be used on the same surfaces where bikes can also be used, including select types of minor streets and bike lanes.
Riding e-scooters on a sidewalk is not permitted, with Lime’s technology capable of detecting when a rider has taken their device onto a sidewalk. GPS and vibration sensor technology will alert the rider to return to a proper route. As well, using GPS, the devices can automatically slow down in select areas, such as zones with high pedestrian traffic.
The City will work with Lime on creating slow and no-ride zones, sidewalk detection, a “training” mode on the device, and helmet selfies.
Lime e-scooter share devices. (Lime)
While the municipal government provided a significant $5 million startup subsidy for Mobi a decade ago, the partnership with Lime is expected to come at zero cost, with no financial contribution from the municipal government for any of the capital and ongoing operating costs. This is intended to be a revenue-neutral or revenue-generating opportunity for the City.
The San Francisco-based global micromobility giant will pay the municipal government annual fees for each station installed in a City-owned public space — such as a station situated on curbside parking spaces — and each e-scooter device deployed. As well, Lime will cover any lost parking revenue for pay parking spaces used for stations.
Additional revenue to the City from Lime entails revenue sharing per ride and future sponsorship revenue sharing.
“I’m super excited about this. I consider this to be a gift today on a sunny beautiful day in Vancouver that we get to award this contract. For me, it feels like a long time coming,” said ABC city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung during the meeting.
Lime’s expansion into Vancouver stems from a June 2022 decision made by the previous makeup of City Council to approve Kirby-Yung’s motion to launch an e-scooter share service on a pilot project basis. A similar motion by Kirby-Yung was rejected by City Council in 2020.
“It seems like a long time for the due diligence, but I think you can see all that work that our staff did has really paid off. When I look at the pros here, we have the first all-docked shared e-scooter system in North America. We’re adding more transportation options for residents in our city. We have the latest technology and commitment to continuing supporting upgrade it from the operator,” continued Kirby-Yung.
In a previous interview with Daily Hive Urbanized in October 2023, just prior to the City’s launch of the procurement process, Lime CEO Wayne Ting stated Vancouver as an expansion market was a top priority for the company due to the city’s immense shared micromobility potential.
Compared to other markets, Lime’s expansion into Vancouver carries significantly higher upfront capital costs for the company, given the unique requirement for locking docking parking stations. Charging requirements for the e-scooter devices will be completed during regular maintenance activities by Lime’s operating crews, as the stations will not serve to double as charging equipment.
The contract with Lime will span for an initial term of five years, with the municipal government’s option to extend the contract for three additional five-year terms for a total contract term of up to 20 years. City staff state the exclusive long-term contract provides Lime with the incentive to make the necessary financial investments for an optimal and higher-quality service.
One of the public speakers who addressed City Council today regarding the contract award was Erik Moedt, who has been working for Vancouver Bike Share, the operating of the Mobi bike share system, for the past six years, and is currently their planning manager. Vancouver Bike Share is an operating subsidiary of Miami-based micromobiltiy company CycleHop, which operates in over a dozen cities across North America.
He shared that while he has mixed feelings about Lime, he is opposed to the contract award.
“Introducing shared e-scooters to Vancouver will further broaden this access to active transportation. I’m disappointed Vancouver Bike Share was not the first choice to deliver this opportunity. I’m very excited to see e-scooters finally here, and I’m very excited to hear they’ll be launched in Grandview-Woodland so that I can give it a shot,” said Moedt.
“Lime is an industry leader and has a great track record for delivering shared e-scooter systems.”
But Moedt suggests the introduction of a competitor for the exclusive e-scooter share service over a relatively long initial operating of five years could put a real dent in Mobi’s finances. He says that after e-scooter share services were introduced in Montreal, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, DC, there was a corresponding 30% decrease in ridership revenue for existing bike share services.
Moedt further adds that unlike the bike share systems in these four cities, Mobi is currently not supported by public funding, and relies on ridership and sponsorship revenues (e.g. Rogers as the naming rights sponsor for Mobi) to cover its costs.
“My fear is that the introduction of e-scooters will significantly have a negative impact on our ability to continue to expand and operate. I’m concerned that the impacts of a competing shared e-scooter provider have not been taken into account as part of this process,” said Moedt.
Mobi bike share station (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
In response, Kirby-Yung said significant City funding was previously invested into Mobi, and it is still an ongoing process for the municipal government to recover its financial investment.
“We need systems that are sustainable,” said Kirby-Yung, before noting that Mobi was granted exclusivity for operating e-bike share in Vancouver.
“Because of Mobi having that contractual ability, that is why you’re only seeing Lime offering e-scooters and not e-bikes.” She also noted that based on the experiences of other cities, riders of e-scooters will not always use e-bikes, and this could result in an overall net gain in shared micromobility ridership in Vancouver.
Mobi recorded its best-year ever in 2023, when it saw a total of 1.2 million rides — up from 977,000 in 2022, representing a year-over-year increase of 23%. As well, the number of unique riders on the system in 2023 reached 107,538.
A key change that propelled Mobi’s growth was the full year in 2023 of expanding into offering e-bikes as an option, which were gradually introduced starting in August 2022 — in addition to maintaining the regular bike fleet. This initial e-bike expansion between August and October 2022 entailed 50 additional bike share stations, including 30 e-bike share stations, and the fleet’s first 500 e-bikes.
By the end of 2023, Mobi had 2,000 regular bikes, 600 e-bikes, 248 stations, and 4,665 docks. This includes the installation of three e-bike share stations with over 100 e-bikes at the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in December 2023, representing Mobi’s first geographical expansion outside of the City of Vancouver’s borders. Mobi has further UBC campus expansion plans to install an additional seven stations and grow the docking capacity to over 200 e-bikes by Summer 2024.
In addition to the UBC expansion, Mobi also saw its geographical service area expand southwards within Vancouver, with areas previously seeing a southernmost extent at 16th Avenue in 2022 now reaching 20th Avenue as of 2023.
Lime Bike Share at Lonsdale in North Vancouver (City of North Vancouver)
Lime already has a strong presence in several other municipal jurisdictions in Metro Vancouver, which likely gives the company economies of scale for its local operations.
Lime first launched its e-bike share service in the City of North Vancouver and the District of North Vancouver in July 2021, and it further expanded into the jurisdiction of the District of West Vancouver in July 2022.
According to previous data shared by Lime, after the first two full years of operations between July 2021 and August 2023, Lime’s e-bike public share service on the North Shore recorded a total of over 156,000 trips.
The company subsequently launched an e-scooter share service in Richmond in May 2022, and an e-bike and e-scooter share service in Coquitlam in June 2023. In June 2024, Lime announced a partnership with Squamish Nation to provide shared micromobility services for the First Nation’s reserves.