Member Spotlight: Lime
Lime provides electric bikes and scooters in more than 200 cities in nearly 30 countries on five continents, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Since 2017, they have helped riders take more than 500 million trips, covering over 600 million miles. Their mission is to build a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free.
Lime is proud to power all of their e-bikes, e-scooters, warehouses and offices on renewable energy. They also set a science-based carbon target, in line with the Paris Climate Accords and recently completed their fourth annual carbon inventory report. The report found that since 2019, Lime has reduced company-wide carbon impact by 37% per passenger-kilometer provided to riders.
Lime Access Program
In 2018, Lime introduced discounted e-bike and e-scooter rides, through their Lime Access program, with a goal of breaking down barriers to sustainable transportation to more communities. In 2022, nearly 13,000 Lime Access riders took over 1 million trips.
Despite strong ridership numbers, Lime believed there was more to understand about how Lime Access riders use the service and how that might differ from non-Access users. To that end, Lime worked with Monash University Professor Alexa Delbosc to survey Lime riders in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The research team received responses from over 1,000 Lime riders, and roughly 1 in 10 of the respondents used Lime Access. The Monash researchers asked about the riders’ demographics, Lime travel patterns, and their attitudes and perceptions of using Lime.
Below are some takeaways from the report:
- Lime Access riders depend on Lime to make everyday, essential trips. Access riders are almost twice as likely to use Lime for commuting and other utilitarian trips (68%) compared to non-Access riders (37%).
- Lime Access in combination with public transit supports a car-light or car-free life. Nearly half (44%) of Lime Access users’ trips connected to or from public transit as part of an overall multimodal journey. And when public transit was unavailable, Lime was a robust alternative: over a third of trips by Lime Access riders replaced public transport (34%).
From the results, Lime looks to improve the Lime Access program and ways that cities can further support its efforts. In 2023, Lime implemented two additional Lime Access changes:
- Lime partnered with Propel, a financial services company that helps individuals manage their public benefits, to advertise Lime on their platform as a way of directly reaching individuals most likely to benefit from Lime Access.
- Lime has invested in a partnership with SheerID to streamline the application process. Lime reports that in most cases, applications are processed in under 60 seconds, rather than requiring Lime staff to manually review applications, which can take up to 3 days. In markets where this integration has gone into effect, Lime Access sign ups have increased by 90%.
When asked about the value of NABSA membership, Lime said they greatly appreciate the leadership role that NABSA plays in North America. “The annual NABSA conference is a fantastic convening spot for bikeshare and scootershare operators to share best practices and learn from each other. The NABSA Annual “State of the Industry” reports provide vital, credible statistics about the trends in the industry that are a reference point for researchers, advocates, and operators alike.”
For additional information about Lime, visit https://www.li.me/.
