Lime Scooters return to South Lake Tahoe for the summer

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Love them or hate them, Lime Scooters have returned for the 2021 summer. Lime will be operating 500 of the lime-colored battery-operated scooters in South Lake Tahoe once they all arrive.

The scooters are popular with visitors and locals, with the scooter placement at bus stops giving locals a micro-transit option to get to their final destination. In a pandemic year, almost 200,000 rides were taken which equals to almost 50,000 car rides, according to Lime. The scooters are rented through a phone app and a function will tell the renter the location of the nearest available scooter.

In 2017, South Lake Tahoe was the very first town in California to offer Lime bikes. The following year there were both Lime bike and scooters as mobility options on the South Shore. Then, in 2019, the bikes were dropped and just the scooters were available for rent.

The City of South Lake Tahoe created a Shared Mobility Device ordinance in 2019. In that ordinance, the Council voted on a fee of $75 per scooter per year but Lime came back during a shortened season created by COVID-19 in 2020 and asked for a fee reduction. They waived that $75 fee with an emergency ordinance, charging instead ten cents per trip. In 2020 the City collected $18,651 in revenue from Lime. The emergency ordinance ended October 31, 2020.

This year the City can expect $37,500 from the non-refundable fees outlined in the ordinance.

"Lime is thrilled to be back in South Lake Tahoe, where residents and visitors love to travel safely and sustainably using our shared electric scooters," said Senior Director of Strategic Development and Government Relations for Lime, Jonathan Hopkins. "We've worked with the City and with our community partners to make this year's shared scooter program even easier to use and safer for riders and pedestrians alike. We look forward to continuing to work with the City to meet the growing demand for micro-mobility as South Lake Tahoe jumpstarts its post-pandemic economic recovery."

Safety of pedestrians in the Heavenly Village area has been a concern since the scooters first arrived, and Lime said they've made the area a "no-ride, no parking zone."

The ordinance outlines other requirements:

All riders must be 18-years-old and above.
No rider shall operate a shared mobility device with more than one rider per device at a time.
Riders must park shared mobility devices on a sidewalk or other hard surface, in a manner that does not impede pedestrian access.
When a rider operates a shared mobility device in the operator’s fleet within an area subject to geofencing, the operator shall notify the rider of the restricted area (like Heavenly Village).
Each operator shall limit the motorized-assisted speed of each shared mobility device to no more than 15 miles per hour.

Riders can be fined up to $100 for failing to follow the rules.

The micro-mobility company Bird wants to bring electric scooters back to Reno. The Nevada Legislature agreed that the scooters are not mopeds nd the City of Reno has created an ordinance for them. In 2018 Lime put 100 scooters on the streets of Reno but they were removed one day later as the City was not prepared with an ordinance to regulate them. Bird said Reno could support up to 1,200 scooters in Reno and they are also looking at North Lake Tahoe and Sparks as new markets for them.