Today, a fleet of new bike shares are hitting the streets of Seattle.
Lime, which pulled its bikes from Seattle at the end of last year, has relaunched the red JUMP bikes after acquiring the fleet in May. There are 500 e-bikes around the city, available for use through the Uber app for now; they’ll be added to the Lime app eventually. It costs $1 to unlock a bike, and 36 cents per minute to use.
“Bikeshare is going to be critical to mobility in our city as COVID has reduced the capacity of our transit system,” Jonathan Hopkins, Lime Government Affairs for Pacific Northwest & Canada said in a statement. “Over the coming weeks, we will continue to work with the City of Seattle to ensure bikeshare is a critical part of our recovery and key part of our City’s efforts to create safer streets and reduce emissions.”
Lime says they’re taking extra health precautions as they relaunch, but cite guidance from the CDC that COVID-19’s primary mode of transmission is through close contact with others rather than via surface transmission. Even so, they say they plan to enhance their cleaning methods and bike disinfection.
“We are cleaning all parts of the scooter that are touched by people and we are only using products recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the Center for Biocide Chemistries list that have been approved by the EPA for use against the coronavirus,” Lime says.
Photos courtesy Lime
That is more expensive than last year. Wasn’t it like 22 cents per min?
36 cents per minute, that is over $20 per hour. Should be able to buy a bike for that from most any Ballard tent dweller.
Just take a bike from a tent dweller. They took yours a month ago.
Since you and your buddies here are advocating for stealing bikes, or buying and selling stolen bikes, please tell us how you are any better than thieves? I say you offer up your bikes and other property to thieves so the rest of us don’t have to.
Another blog article that the homeless fetishist sockpuppets can’t help but tell everyone about their creepy obsession.
I pick up the bike at this stop, go to safeway “quick shop” back in 30 minutes. That’s about $11 +$1 =$12.00
Or get on the Bus, which now is free but with a fair of $2.50. Not even close. There is a reason the Lime bikes left.
I used Jump bikes quite often last summer and loved them. I definitely won’t be using them at the new rates.
Those new rates will come back to bite them. Our local far left will quickly figure out that anyone riding these bikes is a millionaire and “take action” on them. I’m going to avoid them and the violence that will certainly attend them.
isn’t this like the 3rd bike share this city has used? any reason they think “this time will be different!!”?
Yes, they REALLY care this time.
The people that run this city want Seattle to be a BIKE city sooooo bad. There is one problem,
HILLS. Those won’t go away. Sorry.
Plenty of people biking despite those scary hills. Turns out it’s lack of infrastructure, not the hills, that scare potential cyclists away.
I didn’t say hills are scary, they are just harder to ride up. Not many people are going to ride a bike to pill hill for their DR. appointment. Maybe your in Great shape and have a great bike, most are not. IMO
Biking is not for everyone nor for every situation requiring transportation. I drive a car, ride a bike and take a bus. Which one I choose depends on the situation, but not having to drive for every single trip I need to make is refreshing and saves me money.
As an alternate means of transportation, it’s a cost effective solution for jurisdictions to implement, considering we’ve maximized our roadway build out. Seattle has become more proactive at creating infrastructure for bikes and it’s paying off bigly. 👍
If you haven’t yet you should try an e-bike. They are life-changing devices, really really neat!
Actually the way it has gone is:
Initially SDOT and some private companies invested in a program called Pronto that installed a limited number of share bikes with docking stations around the Seattle Downtown and U.District areas. It was not a success. Then LimeBike, oFo and Spin companies put thousands of dock-less bikes around the city. oFo and Spin soon left then Jump bikes from Uber started appearing. Then LimeBike decided to halt operations and store their fleet while waiting for the city to approve the use of scooter share. Then Jump pulled all their bikes off the streets so no bike for a few months. Now, LimeBike has made a deal with Uber to use their red Jump bikes and give it all another go.
I loved it when oFo would let people use their yellow bikes for free, you still had to use the app but they had months when you could check out a bike for free.
Great! The ship canal is waiting for it’s share of these.
And this silly talk- “Lime says they’re taking extra health precautions as they relaunch…We are cleaning all parts of the scooter that are touched by people”. How stupid do they think Seattle folks are? Okay, I know- it’s a silly question.
Well you sound pretty stupid, so technically there’s at least one in Seattle.
Do they have a SUV version?