Vancouver’s shared e-scooters are growing in popularity, but challenges remain one year in

Last September, there was a new addition to my block — a curbside metal dock that appeared just outside my apartment building. One of my neighbours commented on how it took up a parking spot, but otherwise the installation of the shared e-scooter station didn’t cause much of a stir. 

Personally, I was excited by its novelty and the addition of a new transportation option to my area, which is already well-served by the SkyTrain, bus routes, and bike lanes. But I didn’t really make use of it over the winter — it couldn’t take me most places I wanted to go since service only covered my neighbourhood, Grandview-Woodland, and nearby Hastings-Sunrise. 

But that all changed for me when Lime, the company that operates shared e-scooters, expanded to Mount Pleasant — where my partner and family live — and downtown. I became obsessed with scootering whenever I could, racking up more than 100 rides this summer. 

My experience mirrored a widespread surge in use over the past four months. From last September to June, the e-scooters were used about 75,000 times city-wide. But once Lime expanded its service area to cover downtown and the West End, usage more than quadrupled to over 325,000 rides between June and this September, according to Lime. 

Of course, that big uptick was also due to the good weather and energy of summer, which created ideal conditions for Lime to succeed in the most dense parts of the city. 

The pros and cons of Lime’s system

Dr. Brandon Yau is a public health physician with Vancouver Coastal Health. Part of his work includes consulting with the city on injury prevention and active transportation, making him perfectly positioned to provide an informed perspective on the benefits and drawbacks of the new technology.

Electric or otherwise, using devices like bikes, scooters, longboards, wheelchairs, and hoverboards (collectively known as micromobility) improves mental and physical health, decreases carbon emissions, and improves air quality, Yau told Vancity Lookout. 

However, high speed, intoxication, and not wearing a helmet are big risk factors for e-scooter injuries, including severe ones, Yau said, as well as being new to the device. “We've been seeing anecdotal reports of increased injuries in Vancouver and the region,” Yau said. 

A recent Canada-wide analysis showed there were 498 hospitalizations related to e-scooters in April 2023 to March 2024, a 32 per cent increase compared to the previous 12-month window. However, the data showed that B.C. only saw a five per cent increase in that type of injury in 2023-2024, Yau said. 

In terms of the e-scooters posing a risk for children, Yau said he received an informal review from BC Children’s Hospital that found “a relatively small number of people” under 18 were going to the hospital for e-scooter injuries. 

Yau also said that, surprisingly, in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, a large percentage of severe e-scooter injuries they’ve seen are from riders flying off the scooter or hitting stationary objects, rather than being struck by cars. 

“We can't typically go fast enough to injure ourselves that severely [on a bike], so there is an element of these devices that can cause quite severe injuries,” Yau explained. 

The provincial government has rules in place for e-scooters that set the maximum allowable speed at 25 km/h and prohibit anyone under 16 from riding one.

Specific to the rollout of the shared e-scooters in Vancouver, Yau and Vancouver Coastal Health provided the city with public health advice on how to reduce injury risks and other issues that could be posed by the program. 

That included speed controls in busy pedestrian areas (which Lime has established in places like Commercial Drive, parts of Yaletown, and along East Hastings), providing helmets, and having a docking system to avoid public nuisance and tripping hazards, Yau said. Lime has also implemented time-based intoxication checks in its app, requiring riders to complete a simple reaction check before riding. 

Notably, Yau said he thinks the shared e-scooters pose a smaller risk of harm to the wider population compared to privately owned ones, given the extra layers of oversight from the operator and the city, which provides certainty of maximum device speed, and built-in features like no-go zones and sidewalk detection. In contrast, privately owned scooters could be ridden anywhere, and be modified to go much faster than the provincially mandated 25 km/h with little enforcement. 

“We're really happy that the City of Vancouver [and] Lime worked collaboratively together to implement all of these different interventions, to kind of improve the system here in Vancouver,” compared to other shared e-scooter systems around the world, Yau said. 

Paris is the prime example of pushback against companies like Lime, where complaints over “free floating” scooters and bad user behaviour led the French capital to ban shared e-scooter companies, including Lime, from operating in the city in 2023. 

The reception in Vancouver hasn’t been totally positive either. The strata president of a building in the West End launched a petition last month, alleging a new station nearby has created “constant noise” and “heaps of garbage” in front of their building. The petition, which has less than 150 signatures, used an AI-generated image showing broken scooters and trash littering the ground. 

Scott Bourgeois, the petition’s author, said he’s “spent the last [three] months fighting” to have the station moved and that “Lime and the city have refused to rectify this in any way and have refused to relocate the station to a more suitable location,” Bourgeois wrote in an early September update. 

In response to the petition, a Lime spokesperson told Vancity Lookout they are “currently exploring several operational and technological solutions to mitigate the issues mentioned, with a focus on improving the station's cleanliness and reducing any potential noise. We're committed to finding a resolution that works for everyone and appreciate the community's partnership in helping us get it right.”

There’s also price to consider. Through its partnership with Uber and on its own app, Lime charges riders $1.25 to start their ride and 39 cents per minute after that, plus tax. That can lead to rather high costs at about $8 for a 15-minute ride. 

However, on its app, Lime also offers passes, which waive the starting fee and give riders a certain number of minutes to use over a predetermined amount of time. For example, there’s an option for a 30-minute pass that’s valid for 24 hours and costs a far more reasonable $4.50 after tax. 

The importance of infrastructure

The success of a service like Lime’s is highly dependent on the physical layout of the city. Over the past 45 years, the city has spent considerable money and political capital to build out Vancouver’s active transportation network. The most famous part of that is the Seawall, of course, which was expanded beyond Stanley Park starting in 1980 and now essentially runs from the Convention Centre in Coal Harbour to the western edge of Spanish Banks. 

The northern part of the city has been transformed by the bike lane and greenway projects of the Vision Vancouver government in the late 2000’s and early aughts — a policy direction that has continued under successive civic governments. 

“Vancouver is a very bike-friendly city. [They do] an excellent job in bringing that lens of active transportation to the table,” Dr. Yau with VCH said. 

“When you build these active transportation corridors, they're beneficial for health in a variety of ways,” Yau said, including injury prevention and community building. 

The city has also tried to encourage riders to use these routes rather than main roads, which is the thinking behind Lime’s slow zones and other city-led education campaigns and initiatives. 

Yau said he’s been told that the city also works with Google to optimize rider route choices, “so that Google Maps isn't recommending a crazy main street for folks.” Yau said he’s specifically concerned about gig workers who are trying to make the most efficient route choice, and are using maps that tell them to take major streets, which may be unsafe.  

Neighbourhood inequities 

However, the city’s enthusiastic adoption of active transit infrastructure hasn’t been evenly applied around town, leaving the southeastern section of the city without the friendly access found in the northern and western parts. 

“Historically, and from our health data, South Vancouver has fewer resources to encourage people to use active transportation,” Yau said, pointing to the area not being included in the nearly decade-old Mobi bike share program and having less physical infrastructure. 

A Lookout reader featured in our cycling story last month also highlighted concerns over a lack of infrastructure in South Van.

“I think that is an area that we want to work with the city to improve upon,” Yau said. It’s also something that the current city council is trying to bolster. 

Last week, city council unanimously approved a motion from ABC Coun. Mike Klassen to create a continuous pathway for active transportation along a railway near Kent Avenue in South Vancouver. Klassen’s motion asks staff to engage with the railway company and other stakeholders about establishing a pathway from Boundary Road to the Marine Drive Canada Line Station at Cambie Street, and possibly extending it further west to link up with the Arbutus Greenway. 

The Arbutus corridor was another former railway that the city purchased in 2016 and converted into a popular walking and riding route, which Klassen said is a “successful precedent” for transforming the Kent corridor. 

Lime’s community engagement manager Clare Laverty told Vancity Lookout that the company’s goal is to expand the program across the entire city. However, Laverty wasn’t able to share any tentative timelines for when that might happen, or even which neighbourhoods Lime is looking to expand to next. Currently, the service cuts off south of 10th Avenue and just west of Granville Street.

“It’s a partnership with the city [and] we're just taking our time, making sure that we're engaging with communities and businesses to ensure a successful roll out,” Laverty said, adding she’s already personally spoken with about 2,000 neighbours in areas where Lime has installed stations. 

For Yau, the benefits of the e-scooter program aren’t just about transportation and emissions reduction. “People find these devices fun. I've seen so many people enjoy trying these [shared] e-scooters in particular…it's a novel thing. It's not just this serious [thing], like ‘we need a way to get from point A to point B’. People enjoy them, and so that's of value to society, to our health, and [for] the vibrancy of our city,” Yau said. 

While there are undoubtedly important issues to address around continued safety, equitable access, and impact on neighbours, I’d certainly agree with Yau after my scooter summer. We’ll see how sustainable the program is when the novelty wears off and the rain sets in again. But for now, the city and its operations partner can celebrate a successful first year in town.