LimeBike to expand to use of scooters in South Lake Tahoe
Submitted by paula on Tue, 04/03/2018 - 9:14pm
South Lake Tahoe was the first city in California to carry the dockless bicycle sharing system, LimeBike, and now the community may soon be seeing the next generation, Lime-S.
At Tuesday's City Council meeting, Sam Dreiman, Manager of Strategic Development for LimeBike, and Jesse Patterson, Deputy Director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, made a presentation to Council on numbers from 2017 and plans for 2018.
In 2017, LimeBike brought in 350-400 bikes to South Lake Tahoe that could be used for a quick trip to a restaurant, a ride to the beach and other short distance rides. There were over 12,000 trips made on a LimeBike by over 6,000 users last summer in South Lake Tahoe. The average trip was 10 minutes long and covered 1.1 miles.
Dreiman said that 300,000 calories were burned on the bikes locally, or the equivalent of 530 Big Macs burned off.
Better yet were the vehicle miles saved. With over 6,600 fewer miles made by car, over 5,300 pounds of carbon dioxide was kept out of the atmosphere.
The League to Save Lake Tahoe (League) became a partner with LimeBike because of these numbers.
"We thought technology was a great way to address transportation in Lake Tahoe," said Patterson. He said the League is committed to reducing emissions and protecting the lake, something accomplished by the use of LimeBike.
Patterson also said there may be some local partner agencies in another new product for LimeBike, their electric bike.
The Reno/Sparks area will be seeing LimeBike in their communities soon, as are many cities across the country. They will be the sole provider of bike sharing in Reno in 2018.
Dreiman said LimeBike is excited about their new produce, an electric scooter Lime-S.
"We are seeing truly incredible ridership numbers," said Dreiman of Lime-S. The scooters are powered by electric battery, go up to 15 mph and have a range of 37 miles. They will cost $1 to unlock and 15 cents per minute of riding time.
"We are very excited about the real impact this can have on getting folks out of cars and reducing traffic," said Dreiman.
The company will be looking for locals to be "Lime Juicers," paid staff who will pick up the scooters nightly and recharge them at their homes. Sensors on the scooters will alert staff when they tip over, something LimeBike will help improving their operations.
Lessons were learned by the Bay Area company in 2017. Many of their bikes were vandalized in South Lake Tahoe, with some finding it funny to dump them in the lake or put into trees. Overall, the company sees about one percent of their bike vandalized and Lake Tahoe was no different.
"Why do we want to come back to Lake Tahoe? We are excited by strong and consistent ridership," said Dreiman.
"We are working with LimeBike to facilitate their conversations with the brick and mortar bike shops," said Steve Teshara, CEO of the Tahoe Chamber. "We are pleased to see they are coming back."
Some complaints in town last summer were the bikes were unfairly competing with bike shops. When looking at the numbers, it appears those using LimeBike did not take away the normal clientele of bike shops.
They plan on bringing their pedal bikes, electric bikes and scooters into South Lake Tahoe mid-May through mid-October.
Patterson said the League has been contacted by Mammoth, Yosemite and other recreation areas about LimeBike.
Following South Lake Tahoe in carrying the lime green bikes are other California cities Alameda, Albany, Burlingame, El Cerrito, Imperial Beach, Los Angeles, National City, San Diego, So. San Francisco and Walnut Creek. European cities Zurich and Frankfurt have also found the value of ride sharing and have LimeBikes in their communities, as have 17 colleges and universities and 19 cities besides Reno and South Lake Tahoe.
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