In late April, Gabriel Scheer, director of government affairs and strategic development for Lime, a dockless bikeshare and scootershare company based in San Mateo, Calif., gave a presentation to a room full of young professionals in the Third Ward. The presentation was a part of Startup Milwaukee’s Emerge event but was also an effort to build community support for a company that provides an innovative, albeit controversial, new service.
By now, most of the city is familiar with bikeshare in the form of the ubiquitous Bublr Bikes that can be spotted all over town. Users unlock a bicycle from stations placed throughout the city and return it to the station closest to their destination. Lime takes this general idea and substitutes the docking stations for a smartphone app that lets users locate, unlock and pay for the bicycle, electric bicycle or electric scooter. When they’re finished, users leave the vehicle anywhere it can legally be parked for the next rider.
While Bublr is the best point of reference for what Lime does, Scheer said he does not necessarily look at it as competition. For this reason, electric scooters are the main focus of Lime’s attempt to break into the Milwaukee market. “We feel that we can add value and complement Bublr,” he said. “So, we would love to come and bring in whatever is appropriate for the local market and the community.”
More Transportation Options for More People
Generally speaking, the mission of any bikeshare, scootershare or transit system—whether they are for-profit, nonprofit or public—is to give people alternative means to get around without having to rely on cars. “The more options that people have to do something besides take a car trip, the more likely they are to do that , as long as we give them a reliable, comfortable way to get them to where they are going ,” Scheer said. “I think that the scooter is naturally another thing on top of Bublr, a bus or anything else that can give people the ability to choose something besides a car.”
Scheer explained that electric scooters can bring in a different type of rider that may not be attracted to a pedal bike. Business people not wanting to get their work clothes sweaty may find less physical exertion more appealing. Disabled people may not have the ability to pedal a bike but can operate an electric scooter. “This isn’t to pretend that electric scooters can be all things to all people,” Scheer said. “But I think that they do open up new opportunities for people who would maybe look at a shared bike and say, ‘This isn’t for me.’”
|
|
Data also suggests that dockless systems can reach communities left out of traditional bikeshare. A recent Virginia Tech study that compared dockless bikes in Washington, D.C., to the docked Capital Bikeshare (CaBi) found that “dockless bike riders have a proportionally more geographically dispersed pattern than CaBi riders.” The study also found that “dockless bikes proportionally may have more riders that are from historically disadvantaged races and lower household incomes than CaBi.”
Robert Schneider, an urban planning professor at UW-Milwaukee, thinks dockless bikeshare could provide more access to underserved communities here as well. “In Milwaukee, I think that we should test some of these options to see if they might fit an important niche and expand bikeshare to even more people,” he said. “But we should do this thoughtfully.” He said that the city should set clear expectations for the companies, such as ensuring bike availability in designated neighborhoods at all times, operating year-round, maintaining high-quality bicycles, ensuring that parked bikes do not block sidewalks and curb ramps, providing easy-to-use payment systems and sharing data with the city.
What are Other Cities Saying?
In cities across the country, the reaction to Lime and similar companies has been mixed. Some city officials have praised Lime for adding new transportation options, but concerns over proper permitting, bikes and scooters ending up where they shouldn’t be and rider safety have been echoed across a number of communities.
Deanna Venker, commissioner of traffic for the City of St. Louis, where Lime has been in operation for a little less than two months, said that the company has provided additional access to last-mile (the distance between public transit and home or work) transportation for transit users. She said Lime has also been a reliable transportation option for residents that transit does not reach, tourists and people looking to get to special events. When asked about any issues Lime has caused so far in St. Louis, she said she had “none at this time.”
But as recently as Saturday, May 19, Lime was forced to pull their electric scooters from the streets of Honolulu, Hawaii after just one week in operation because the company never filed the proper permits with the city. City officials in both San Francisco and Charlotte, N.C., have sent Lime cease-and-desist letters—though both cities now allow the service.
In Los Angeles, bikes “scattered across people’s sidewalks” prompted a city councilman to introduce a motion for an “emergency ban” on the service, though the motion was not passed. Bird, an electric scooter company similar to Lime, is facing backlash in Nashville, Tenn., after two women were injured in a hit-and-run accident while riding the scooters.
“I would compare it, to some degree, to cars,” Scheer said. “We as a society have accepted that cars bring us value. As a result, we are willing to accept the close to 40,000 deaths that occur on American highways from people getting hit by cars. We’re willing to accept the pollution that they create. As we’re seeing more and more data rolling in on how we bring value to cities—and this is in no way to minimize the challenges and the things that we need to work on, because those absolutely need to work better—how do we work together to figure out how to best solve these problems?”
Will Lime Launch in Milwaukee?
Any debate around whether Lime’s bikes and electric scooters would be good or bad for the city will not matter if the service never actually launches here. As of the late April presentation with Startup Milwaukee, Lime had “not been able to secure a meeting with the city to discuss its plan to establish service here,” according to a report from BizTimes. When we spoke on Thursday, May 17, Scheer only offered a somewhat vague response: “We have engaged in the city of Milwaukee with some level of folks and are working on figuring out what’s next.”
There is at least one city official in Milwaukee who seems to be on board. Common Council President Ashanti Hamilton spoke at an event hosted by Lime on May 4. “He thinks that Lime would benefit Milwaukee,” a representative from Hamilton’s office said this past Friday. “There is definitely some initial excitement there. We know that in other areas of the country there have been challenges, and we want to try and avoid that. We are aware of both the challenges and the potential for the city to make it so that these bikes can be successful in providing transportation for people.”
Only time will tell what happens from here.
