Lime — the San Francisco company that operates shared bright green bicycles and scooters in cities throughout the country — is launching a pilot program in Tacoma, Wash., Friday.
The Tacoma pilot will include free-floating electric-assist bicycles and electric scooters. Representatives from Lime and the City of Tacoma plan to debut the pilot and demo the mobility devices Friday afternoon.
The initial pilot is fairly conservative. It will last 60 days and include 250 scooters and 100 e-bikes. Seattle, by comparison, has thousands of Lime bikes throughout the city. After the two-month pilot ends, it will be up to Tacoma officials to decide how and if to move forward with the Lime program.
“Lime is thrilled to continue expanding,” a spokesperson for the company said. “This is the sixth city where there are Lime offerings of some kind in Washington state. I think the Northwest has proven to be a really compatible market.”
The Tacoma launch comes on the heels of another Lime pilot in the region. The company launched a pilot e-bike program in Bellevue, Wash., Seattle’s neighbor to the east, in August.
Lime has been offering its dockless, shared bicycles in Seattle for more than a year. It was one of three companies permitted to operate in Seattle under a temporary pilot and the only one of those initial operators to apply for a permanent permit in the city. Lime started with traditional bicycles and began rolling out electric-assist bikes in February.
In other cities, Lime has cashed in on the free-floating electric scooter craze. But the Seattle Department of Transportation forbids scooter shares, at least for now.
