To begin, “Lime riders from Minneapolis will be able to ride into St. Paul this month,” said Jacob Tugendrajch, a New York-based spokesman for Lime. “We’re aiming for mid-August for a dedicated e-bike fleet launch in St. Paul.”
St. Paul hosts two approved e-scooter companies, Lime and Spin, but bike-sharing hasn’t pedaled into the capital city since 2018. LimeBike briefly operated dockless bikes in St. Paul that year, but neither Lime nor the now-defunct nonprofit bike-share vendor Nice Ride Minnesota returned the following year.
The bikes can be accessed through the Lime app on a smartphone, or through Uber, a major investor.
The St. Paul City Council voted 6-0 on Wednesday to approve an agreement with Lime under the company name Neutron Holdings. Council Member Rebecca Noecker was away on vacation. The agreement can be extended annually, by mutual agreement, through the year 2026.
Still, not every council member expressed high enthusiasm for the new agreement.
“I have mixed feelings about it,” said St. Paul City Council President Amy Brendmoen, in an interview Wednesday. “These will be e-bikes, which are helpful in St. Paul on the hills, but I see the e-scooters laying around on street corners. But in other cities, the e-bikes work just fine. They can block (access). For mobility issues, they become a barrier. Reporting them is great, but it doesn’t help you in that moment.”
An up and down relationship
The capital city has had an up-and-down relationship with micro-mobility vendors, two of whom began rolling e-scooters into St. Paul in the summer of 2018 without any form of contract or licensing agreement, a kind of guerilla marketing approach that sought forgiveness rather than permission. Those vendors were Bird and Lime.
In the summer of 2018 — Nice Ride’s final summer in the city — St. Paul was home to a fourth of the Nice Ride docking stations, but just 7 percent of its rides originated in St. Paul.
Nice Ride, which began seasonal bike-sharing in Minneapolis in 2010, ended its 13-year-run in the Twin Cities this year. The nonprofit cited its own outdated technology and a $2 million budget gap after its major sponsor, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, declined to renew its grant funding.
Nice Ride’s demise may have further opened the door for Lime to roll into St. Paul.
“We’ve served Minneapolis for five years now, and we’ve learned quite a bit,” said LeAaron Foley, director of government and community affairs for Lime’s Midwest region. “We’re now surpassing Nice Ride’s ridership from last year alone. And this was in a matter of months.”
Joint request
Until now, Minneapolis has had better luck than St. Paul in attracting micro-mobility vendors. In the fall of 2021, the two cities attempted to partner with the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Parks Board on a joint request for proposals to attract vendors to provide shared bike and scooter services in 2022 and beyond.
The request for proposals was designed to solicit vendors, not to create uniform regulations, and the micro-mobility market continues to be segmented by separate vendors, contracts and rules in each municipality throughout the metro where it exists at all.
In marketing materials, Lime highlighted the automatic two-speed transmission of its “Gen4” e-bikes, designed to eliminate the need to shift gears. A new handlebar display mimics the design on its e-scooters and includes a phone holder.
“We recommend that riders use helmets,” Foley said. “They are not required by city or state law.”
Agreement details
Under the terms of the St. Paul agreement, Lime must pay the city an annual right-of-way and parkland deployment fee of $25 per vehicle, beginning with a minimum deployment of 200 electric-assist bikes.
In any calendar month where at least 75 percent of the fleet has averaged at least one ride per day, Lime will pay the city a trip fee of 12 cents per trip, issued on a monthly basis. On top of trip fees, Lime will pay a “park impact” fee of 25 cents per trip all trips that begin or end on parkland.
Lime will reimburse the city for staff time spent relocating or removing the e-bikes from any location where parking is prohibited under the agreement, at the rate of $35 per move and $20 storage fees per day within a city storage facility. The company must remove a poorly-parked Lime bike from the city right-of-way within 24 hours of being notified by the city.
At least 30 percent of the fleet must be distributed to St. Paul’s low-income areas of concentrated poverty, where riders will receive automatic 40 percent discounts. In Minneapolis, riders in designated “equity distribution areas” also receive an automatic 40 percent discount. A second discount program, Lime Access, allows riders to sign up for income-based discounts.
A maximum of 150 electric-assist bikes can be distributed within the official downtown entertainment district. A maximum of 50 electric-assist bikes can be distributed within Harriet Island Regional Park.
In addition to Minneapolis, Lime offers e-bikes and e-scooters in Rochester, Minn.
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