While Bird and Lime scooters are to be removed from the city of Raleigh before the summer, Lime scooters and electric bikes will remain available for use at NC State.
Due to low demand, however, non-electric LimeBikes will be removed from the university.
Around September 2018, Bird introduced electric scooters to the Raleigh area. Shortly after, Lime followed suit with its own scooters in the area.
Recently, the city of Raleigh has imposed new regulations on the last-mile vehicles, which has led to both Bird and Lime’s choices to leave Raleigh.
However, while both companies have announced their leave from the city, because of Lime’s partnership with NC State, its products will remain on campus, according to Mike Kennon, assistant transportation director.
Kennon said that the only exception will be non-motorized LimeBikes, which arrived before Lime scooters; however, this is unrelated to the actions taken by the city of Raleigh and has been in the works for six weeks. These will be removed from campus due to low usage.
“The usage of pedal bikes dropped to about one percent of total Lime rides,” Kennon said. “They take maintenance; Lime is trying to be as efficient as possible just like any other business, and they were spending a great deal of time on one percent of their ridership.”
Because the scooters will be removed from the city, Lime products taken outside the university present a unique jurisdictional problem. Kennon said he was unsure exactly how these would be handled in the future, but predicted things would be handled in a way similar to LimeBikes before scooters came to Raleigh.
“If Lime saw something off of campus for more than 24 hours, they went out and got it,” Kennon said. “The whole premise behind bikeshare is that we’re hoping that someone’s gonna bring it back.”
According to Kennon, Raleigh may change its regulations in the future to be stricter by potentially requiring something like a twelve-hour return window.
To accommodate pedestrians around Raleigh, Kennon recommended that riders try to park Lime products away from high traffic areas.
“If you’re gonna take it downtown, park it at or near a bike rack,” Kennon said. “Be mindful of leaving it in sidewalks. If you can, schedule your trip so you can bring that device back to campus.”
