The lowdown on Lime Scooters, New Zealand's newest transport trend

Thursday, 18 October 2018

OK, so we have electric scooters. Cool. But aside from the dos and don'ts, how does it all work?

California company Lime, which started in 2017, launched in Christchurch and Auckland on Monday, attempting to turn Kiwi streets into the sunny boulevards of America's west coast. It has rolled its scooters and bikes out in more than 80 cities around the world and dropped 400 scooters in Christchurch and 500 in Auckland, with plans to deploy more in the near future. Within the month, Christchurch will have 700.

From Monday afternoon, it was hard to miss the green two-wheelers in downtown Christchurch, ridden by smirking residents and tourists alike.

Cameron Swanson is the New Zealand Lime launcher, tasked with rolling out the scheme smoothly. He explained some of the finer details to Stuff.

READ MORE:

*** Lime scooters launch in New Zealand's two largest cities

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Who takes care of the scooters?

There were two types of people responsible for the scooters, Swanson said: Lime's own team of local 'operations specialists', and independently contracted 'juicers' paid to charge the devices.

'People can sign up in a similar way to being an Uber driver. We give them eight chargers to begin with and they collect the scooters in their own vehicles,' Swanson said.

'[Payment] can range up to $15 for each scooter, depending on the charge level of the scooter and the difficulty of retrieving it.'

More than 100 people had signed up for the gig so far, with more expected as scooter numbers increased. If the scooter can not be picked up for any reason, the bounty on that scooter goes up the next day.

'The juicer can mark it as missing; it will be collected later or the next night,' he said.

Lime has a warehouse in Bromley where staff charge and repair the scooters. Each scooter takes four hours to fully charge. Swanson said some repairs had already been done on Christchurch scooters, but only minor mechanical fixes rather than anything caused by people 'riding them too hard'.

How many rides have been taken so far, and how far have people ridden them?

Lime would not say how many individual rides had been taken, but said the longest ride in Christchurch so far was 19.2 kilometres. In Auckland, the longest ride was 25.1km.

'Depending on the terrain, they can go anywhere from 45 kilometres to 60 kilometres on a full charge,' Swanson said.

Worldwide, Lime claims 6 million rides have been taken to date.

What happens if a scooter is taken outside the designated zone?

Scooters can be ridden in most of the wider city area, east to west from Hornby to Sumner, topping out north in Redwood and south in Halswell.

Swanson said a rider would get a notification on their phone if they rode it outside the zone, telling them to return the scooter within bounds.

Legally, where can people ride the scooters?

Scooters can be ridden on roads, footpaths and cycleways. The NZ Transport Agency originally said they could not be used in cycle lanes, but later said lanes could be used if riders were impeding traffic, with the expectation they would return to the road once safe to do so. Behaviour so far in Christchurch suggests people feel safest scootering on footpaths.

How much does it cost?

Riders are charged $1 to hire the scooter and 30 cents a minute, which equals about $18 an hour. Users can pause their ride, essentially reserving it from other users, but the pause rate is the same as the active rate.

Did Lime pay for the right to bring the scheme to Christchurch?

Lime paid the Christchurch City Council $136 for a three-month 'mobile trading permit'. Council head of planning and strategic transport David Griffiths said the fees were set during the long-term plan process.

'As this is a relatively new business model, we're looking to review our permit fees for this type of application,' he said.