LimeBike e-scooter spotted in Ballard

While other bike share companies such as Spin and Ofo have bailed on Seattle, the appearance of a green e-scooter in Ballard would suggest LimeBike is still going strong — and is likely expanding. Known as Lime-S, one of the scooters was spotted yesterday in downtown Ballard, documented by Lauri Miller on the My Ballard Group.

Before you get too excited (or annoyed), LimeBike hasn’t officially launched in Seattle. A spokesperson from the company tells My Ballard that the scooter was out for a “private demo” in Ballard, but that the city hasn’t given the green light for bike share companies to roll out the e-scooters.

The company Bird, which have been launching their free-floating scooters in several cities around the country this year, gained attention when they started listing job postings in Seattle this summer. The company told GeekWire that they’re putting their infrastructure in place set to launch once the city allows for it.

Thanks Lauri for the photos!

47 thoughts to “LimeBike e-scooter spotted in Ballard”

  1. If a pproved by this Council more on the sidewalks than streets, so look out pedestrians. You at their mercy. Probably few scooter riders will wear helmets, just as the Lime bikers and e Lime bikers. More crap to trip over on planting strips and more stuff for street campers to steal. Isn’t Seattle/Ballard awesome these days?

    1. You hate lime bikes and scooters. But you fear their bikes and scooters will be stolen? You hate bike and scooter riders, but seeing them without helmets has you worried for their precious heads? If you’re against something, then concern trolling about the welfare of that thing kind of gives you away. Maybe pick one or the other.

      And the planting strips? I take it you have never made peace with fire hydrants. Or shrubbery. Have you tried walking on the sidewalk?

      1. Pretty simple, actually. I don’t really like dockless bikes littering the landscape everywhere, including our sidewalks and waterways ,for those that have been junked into the Sound or lake. I want all riders to be safe regardless of conveyance, and helmets, according to King County ordinance is law. Most people don’t want to be run over on a bike or scooter if they are pedestrians on sidewalks; they don’t want to have to go around all the Lime bikes illegally parked or thrown on sidewalks into their path. And, most people, me included, don’t want anybody’s stuff stolen.

        You rationalize things worse than elenchos, unless you are, in fact, the very same person.

        1. Interesting that you don’t like the bikes “littering the landscape”, I see them as a kind of urban wildflower, adding bright pops of color in unexpected places. Definitely no worse than seeing cars parked everywhere.

          As a frequent pedestrian, I can count the number of times I’ve been encumbered by dockless sharing bikes on one hand, without using any fingers.

          1. Try running into one of these “bright pops of color” at high speed that has been left at a trail bottleneck or sidewalk ramp.

          2. Keep riding at high speed into bottlenecks and sidewalk ramps and if a lime bike doesn’t take you out, something will. “Cyclist”. Sure you are.

          3. Pretty clear you didn’t ride the BG Trail all summer. Camping next to it doesn’t count.

          4. Sad to say, I am very much aware that MAMILs on the Burke-Gilman do ride like that.

            Seeing a guy who ought to know better blast into a bottleneck or go from the street to a wheelchair ramp to a sidewalk without slowing down is a good example of why I disagree with this obsession over all the sins of one class while ignoring the other classes.

            A housed man on a $6k bike who doesn’t know if the thing around the corner is an abandoned Lime Bike or someone’s toddler or someone’s grandmother is just as bad a person as an unhoused person who uses the sidewalk as a porta potty. Bad behavior all around, among all classes of people. That is why I don’t share this focus on hating only one group’s bad behavior.

            Anyway: slow down. If you’re going into blind corners too fast to avoid a lime bike, you’re going too fast to avoid hitting a person. The Burke-Gilman is called a mixed use trail because it’s a mixed use trail. And sidewalks? Well, the law is clear on sidewalks: you have to go slow enough to yield to any pedestrian going any speed, or not moving at all.

          5. You don’t know how I ride, and it’s pretty clear you don’t. You sound like a snack food low testo type, or maybe a high estrogen woman? Can’t tell. I obey the law because I am also a pedestrian. The lime bikes are left at trail spots where they can be struck by less skillful (you?) new or older riders. Many older people ride casually. Grow up.

          6. “low testo type, or maybe a high estrogen woman”

            Like a “soy boy”? Just gave yourself away. Again.

            You are Access Hollywood, aka California Uber Alles, Simon Jack (and various Simons), O’Brien’s Flying Cucks, Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces, nannystate, Low Testosterone, Low Testosterone City Council, Durkan Supports Human Trafficking, Urban Decay, and boojabana. You’re also Buxom Lady, and Scott and Scott D. You give that away with your “muttering” and “move your wallet” tics. You have so many.

            And many, many more. You have a very narrow set of tells that gives you away, repeated words, phrases. Obsession with soy and hormones (which makes you a paranoid loon, btw). You post “violent threats and that’s one of the reasons you have to hide who you really are with all the fake names.

            Your alt-right obsessions make a pretty strong case that you’re the same person who photoshops the face of U of M Professor Melissa Click onto the avatar of a local journalist you’ve been stalking and harassing for years. You’re holding a grudge for publishing a photo of you at the Milo Yiannoupoulous brownshirt rally. Hanging out with white supremacists and various Trumpers kind of undermines your fake “former liberal now a centrist” facade. You’re alt-right through and through: fascist, white power, and antisemitic. Your hatred of homeless people is only the tip of the iceberg. You posted a photo of a gangster bransishing a gun, saying “here’s a special message for you. Decode this”. Your threats and harassment are against the law, and you know it.

            You’re a fake and a grifter, getting caught at the same game over and over and you don’t learn.

          7. If you are going too fast to stop to handle (brightly colored!) obstacles in a dynamic urban environment, maybe you should just take it to th velodrome or something.

          8. “urban wildflowers,” eh? Kind of like the ones your street camper buddies leave in the bushes and on planting strips, though they look alot more like very large slugs on steroids – or drugs of some kind, anyway.

  2. I for one welcome our two-wheeled overlords. I’m curious about the scooters’ performance on Ballard’s main slopes — if they can’t get to 10mph or so going up Ballard Ave, I don’t think they’ll make much of a splash.

    Sure would be nice to have some competition to keep the ride prices down.

  3. Motorized vehicles don’t belong on trails or sidewalks. Unless you’re elderly or disabled, you really should consider the hazards to cyclists and pedestrians as you whizz past them at street speeds.

  4. Great, more anarchy on every street and sidewalk. Licenses required? License plates? Safety classes? With what we all pay in taxes we should all get a free 1 of these stupid things. What are we Venice? Some tiny mountain villa where cars are banned? OK then, just bring on the roaming yaks and cows. And while at it Rickshaws would also be so cool too. And finally, simply remove all traffic signals. We don’t need them either. Because I want to do what I want to when I want to man. F U. God I love it here.

    1. You were never anything but angry and unhappy before the Lime bikes, though. If they had never happened, wouldn’t you be just as outraged about something else? You just like ten minutes earlier spewed bile about a dog show that you had no interest in, and which would have affected you in no way, and which ultimately never happened. But it sticks in your craw. Somehow. What’s going on?

      I can’t really tell the difference between your indignant performances over bikes and scooters on the sidewalks, and a dog show that didn’t happen. You seem equally upset over both. This is how you are all the time, no matter what, isn’t it?

      The change you seek isn’t eliminating bike shares or even eliminating inconvenience of seeing people you don’t want to look at. It needs to come from within, Scott.

      1. The relapse rate for heroin addiction is over 90%.
        Dogs aren’t people.
        Lime Bikes are clutter.
        Stinky HIV/HEP C tents are a health and safety hazard.

        Any other questions?

        1. Yes. I have questions:

          1. So? Did I say the relapse rate wasn’t 90%?
          2. So? Did I say dogs are people?
          3. So? Did I say Lime bikes aren’t clutter?
          4. What is an “HIV/HEP C tent”?
          5. Where do you come up with this random shit? And why are you telling me about this grab bag of off the wall things?

          1. You missed calling me “Harley”. The lime bikes are trash, so are the junkies and their tents. They’re all health and safety hazards, and their enablers are either a)mentally ill or b) benefiting from the corrupt city regime. See also, San Francisco.

          2. You said “Any other questions?” and I said yes, and I asked my questions. Answer.

  5. “This is like the simplest one of them all in so much as nobody wakes up in the morning, opens their front door and says ‘god look at how many cars there are, they’re parked everywhere.’ They are fucking parked everywhere! There are cars parked everywhere! It’s ridiculous! They’re clogging the roads, they’re making it impossible to get anywhere you want to go,” Kutcher said.

    “But boy do we open up the door and go ‘man there are scooters all over the place.’ Hold on, wait a second, this is aversion to change. And suddenly we go: Alright, we have to regulate the hell out of this because people are complaining. But nobody is complaining about the fact that there are cars everywhere.”

      1. Try obeying trafffic laws sometime. Bikers are entitled scum who run stop signs and suddenly swtich between acting like a car or pedestrian.

        1. Your vehicle weighs tons, and you’re too busy texting or yelling at your wife’s kids to pay attention. Half the drivers on the road are buried in their phones. Try again.

        2. Bikers are entitled scum, but so are drivers, and pedestrians. And dog owners, parents, childless people, retired people, Amazon employees, independent bookstore owners, homeowners, renters, police, politicians, journalists, online commenters, children, adults, college students, college graduates, college dropouts, high school dropouts, high school graduates, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, military veterans and draft dodgers. AND Canadians. I didn’t forget about you motherfuckers, Canada. I see you.

          People are entitled scum.

          1. Well, look-y here, a Leftist finally got honest about her misanthropy. Somebody take a picture it’s like the Loch Ness Monster over here.

          2. Misanthropy! Yes, of course.

            …OR maybe… maybe… it has something to do with the mote in your brother’s eye and the beam in your own?

          3. Careful, if you start reading Scripture you might learn some ethics. Even worse, if you got saved you would recoil in horror at your previous life devoted to enabling the destructive behavior of criminals and addicts at the expense of your neighbors. As that heathen Sartre observed: Hell is other people. Indeed, especially if they’re feral antisocial lunatics.

      2. You ride too fast. Slow down before you hurt somebody.

        And trucks and cars park in center turn lanes every day. Cars load and unload in the driving lanes all the time. Cars double park. Do you know what “double park” means? Of course you do, because cars do it so often we had to make a term for it.

    1. Self-respecting adults aren’t obsessed with not looking like tools to anonymous people on the Internet. You are thinking of self-conscious insecure adults.

      If you enjoy riding electric scooters, have fun! Most people don’t care how you look, and those who do will probably find some reason to hate on you.

Leave a Reply