BOISE, Idaho — Lime, the E-scooter and E-bike rental service, is entering a contract with Boise to become the city's sole provider of its kind.
The agreement goes into effect in July, ending the agreements with other dock-less e-vehicle rental services, like Bird. The city's contract with Lime will create a network of bikes and scooters around the city, differing from where they're offered now.
“One of our goals, I know, at the city, with this Lime contract, is to make sure we’re not just making these Lime bikes in one downtown area where they’re going to get the most use," said Jimmy Hallyburton, a Boise City Council member and the Executive Director of the Boise Bicycle Project. "By going with one company, we can actually spread those out into different neighborhoods and make sure we’re looking at this through an equity lens.”
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The dockless, rented e-vehicles are usually activated by an app. As the city shrinks to a single provider, they believe it will help streamline the process given there will only be one singular app.
The city is still finalizing details around the partnership but they say, along with the expansion outside of Downtown, Lime could eventually offer a seated scooter.
Lime, and other e-vehicle renting companies, don't provide helmets with their bikes, although they are encouraged. Idaho News 6 asked Hallyburton about safety around rentable e-vehicles and he said it is on the city to create safe biking infrastructure.
“Certainly there’s risks and safety concerns with everything, that’s even walking, the risk of getting hit and injured walking is just as much as it is biking," Hallyburton said. "There’s a lot we can do to address those issues, through street design, through the speeds that we let people drive in neighborhoods, and by making sure that we’re prioritizing the safety of our most vulnerable users.”
