New Lime bike spotlights micromobility access
The LimeBike (left) has optional pedals, while the LimeGlider (right) uses immovable footpads. Photo by Lime.
The world’s largest scooter and e-bike rental company has soft-launched a new accessibility-friendly e-bike in Atlanta.
“The LimeBike is meant to ‘complement’ the pedal-assist Gen4 e-bike that Lime launched in 2022,” the Verge reports.
It comes with pedals as well as a handlebar throttle, allowing riders to either pedal with electric assist or move with electric power only. Its seatpost has a quick-adjust clamp to make it easier to move up or down, among other improvements.
As more cities look to micromobility to improve access to mass transit, concerns about accessibility of the devices themselves have risen.
The e-bike industry has a responded with a variety of designs intended to address the problem. And academics note that properly designed e-bikes offer an opportunity not only to improve accessibility for the elderly and disabled, but also to promote exercise and recreation.
[T]he Texas A&M Transportation Institute looked at how adaptive e-bikes — such as tricycles and quadcycles for people with balance issues, recumbent bikes with a lower center of gravity, or bikes with handcranks to help people with lower body mobility issues — can serve the 32 percent of Americans who will develop travel-limiting disabilities by age 80.
The new LimeBike doesn’t go as far as, say, a quadcycle to promote access. It’s geared more toward elderly riders and those with limited mobility rather than those with more severe mobility issues. As the AJC reports:
[T]he latest LimeBike features a lower center of gravity and a smaller frame designed with women, older adults and riders of varying ability in mind. LimeBike’s handlebar throttle allows riders to move without electric pedal assist … .
The San Francisco-based company also announced that it’s rolling out an accessibility-friendly scooter with a similar test run starting in August in Seattle. The LimeGlider looks much like an e-bike, but it doesn’t qualify as one because has immovable footpads rather pedals.
“The LimeGlider and LimeBike offer a glimpse at the future of micromobility, designed with a wider rider audience in mind to help us draw closer to our mission of building a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free,” Lime CEO Wayne Ting said in a press release.
Two-week test runs of the LimeBike Atlanta and Seattle will now be followed by a rollout of the accessibility-friendly e-bike in Zurich.
The AJC quotes one Lime official as saying: “We chose Atlanta as one of the first cities in the world to pilot our throttle e-bike and now the first city to experience LimeBike because it’s a city that advocates for and champions sustainable and alternative transportation.”
