After a lengthy bidding process that began in November 2023, the City of Vancouver has selected Lime to launch and operate a new e-scooter public share service.
The recommendation to select the San Francisco-based multinational micromobility giant, which has become synonymous with e-scooter share services around the globe, is expected to be formally approved by Vancouver City Council in a public meeting next week.
Lime beat out other proposals submitted by Vancouver Bike Share (the operator of Vancouver’s existing comprehensive Mobi bike share system), Bird Rides, Neuron Mobility, and VeoRide.
The criteria used to evaluate the bids included system design and e-scooter specifications, operations and public engagement, sustainable and ethical procurement requirements, and financial plan.
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.
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. In fact, this is intended to be a revenue-generating opportunity for the City.
In the November 2023 procurement materials, the City stated that the e-scooter share service must operate with locking docking parking stations as a measure to greatly mitigate the issues seen in other cities with street clutter and public safety from dockless systems.
It would appear that Lime is creating a “Made for Vancouver” solution, given the company’s specialization in dockless systems.
Lime e-scooters in Valencia, Spain. (Joaquin Corbalan P/Shutterstock)
Lime will be required to pay an annual fee for each docking station located in City-owned public spaces, such as curbside road spaces, and compensate for all lost metered parking revenue. Additionally, each e-scooter device deployed will carry an additional annual fee.
Any other costs incurred by the city, such as requiring municipal crews to change signage, will also be covered by the operator.
Other stipulations outlined in the procurement materials include limiting the operator’s ability to deploy more than 35% of its fleet or no more than 500 e-scooters, whichever is lesser, at any one time to the downtown Vancouver peninsula. At the same time, the operator should integrate its e-scooter share service with public transit – given that e-scooters are often used as the “first mile” and “last mile” to reach major public transit services – as well as areas currently underserved by public transit and other shared micromobility services, such as Mobi bike share.
Similar to Mobi bike share’s gradual rollout, based on the procurement materials, Lime will begin with a limited service area and a smaller e-scooter fleet, with incremental expansion into other areas of the city and further fleet deployments based on ridership demand and public input.
However, for the time being, Lime’s expansion to serve public parks, beaches, and the seawall will be limited, as this requires a separate agreement with the Vancouver Park Board due to their separate jurisdictional authority.
Last fall, the operators of Mobi publicly shared their challenges with expanding their services onto Park Board-operated jurisdiction, and openly supported Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s plan to abolish the elected Park Board body and its separate jurisdictional authority.
“Historically, establishing new Mobi Bike stations in parks has been complicated and slow because we have to work with two governmental bodies within the City of Vancouver. This change would simplify and speed up the approval process for Mobi stations in parks, eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy and allowing us to bring more active transportation services to our city,” said Mia Kohout, general manager of Vancouver Bike Share, in December 2023.
Lime e-scooter in Richmond. (Lime)
It is not immediately clear when exactly Lime could launch its service. During the procurement process, City staff indicated their goal of having an operator launch the initial service sometime in the second quarter of 2024, but this decision of selecting the operator is now within the third quarter.
In October 2023, Lime CEO Wayne Ting, during his visit to Vancouver, told Daily Hive Urbanized his company has immense interest in adding Vancouver to its growing Canadian market.
“Vancouver has almost every single one of the characteristics that make it a very popular micromobility city. You want cities that are warm year-round, have high density, and are near waterways,” said Ting during the interview.
“There are a lot of places where you can go around waterways. Then there are also investments in bike lanes and places with a lot of tourists. The number of post-secondary students is another characteristic. I think it can be one of the best micromobility cities out there.”
Lime, as the newest major player in Vancouver’s shared micromobility ecosystem, could provide Mobi with new competition.
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.
Mobi bike share station. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
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.