Wellesley wasn’t invited to take part in the dockless and shareable Lime bike experiment for 15 metro Boston communities in 2018. We got stuck with Ant bicycles until that business bugged out shortly after it started.
It doesn’t look like we missed much though.
According to Curbed Boston, Lime is ditching its Boston-area bike program to focus on scooters (not that Lime mentions this in a recent blog post about other cutbacks).
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Even though Wellesley wasn’t officially part of the Lime program, plenty of the green bikes found their way into town, often abandoned at train stations, sometimes on sidewalks. One particularly pesky Lime bike made its way onto a Washington Street fence over the summer after it blocked the sidewalk for days.
We haven’t seen much in the way of shareable electric scooters in Wellesley, other than the occasional rogue Bird device. Well, I did need to dodge an electric skateboard rider on a Linden Street sidewalk this week.
Anyway, we look forward to the arrival of electric scooters and all other manner of newfangled vehicles in these parts. Should provide plenty of Swellesley Report fodder if they make their way into town…
I hope that Town authorities will give this matter serious consideration before allowing shareable scooters as a means of transportation in Wellesley. My friends in Brookline, where such scooters abound, complain vociferously about scooters causing safety hazards for cars on the road, for pedestrians on sidewalks, and for the scooter-riders themselves.
Just to clarify, there’s no indication that Lime will be bringing scooters to Wellesley. Though it’s not unreasonable to think they could show up if Lime does partner with surrounding communities, as it has in Brookline. It couldn’t hurt for town officials to at least be thinking ahead on this, if they aren’t already as part of its Unified Plan and other transportation plans.
I will say that we saw tons of scooters during our recent trip to Nashville. Obviously a much different set-up than Wellesley. While aesthetically, the scooters strewn about weren’t great, people did seem top be making good use of them to zip around the city instead of using cars.
Thank you for clarifying, Bob. You make a good point about abandoned scooters being an aesthetic concern. Depending on where strewn-about, abandoned scooters also present a safety hazard, particularly to pedestrians with accessibility or vision problems.