If you do not see Lime bikes out in Hartford this Spring, there are a few reasons why.

The City

The City of Hartford — meaning, the governing body — is a hotbed of inaction, taking too literally the “land of steady habits” slogan. There is a comprehensive bike plan that has yet to be released. Not a single mile of paint was striped for bike lanes in the last year. No bike infrastructure, period, has been added in the last year unless you count the installation of bicycle racks that have been in possession for at least a decade.

But wait, that’s not all! Lime, the bikeshare company, wanted to add electric scooters to the mix as we see in so many other medium-sized and major cities. A decision on that should have been made months ago. It wasn’t. The City Council takes far too long to move on anything, which is especially frustrating when it is known that they seemed both positive about e-scooters and would have been an influence on City departments.

Folks nervous about potential safety issues dragged their feet on the possibility when they could have formed an agreement that demanded crash data from Lime or even stipulated that if more than a certain percentage of users experienced injuries, the scooters would have to go. This is particularly astounding when one knows enough about data to understand that cars, not electric scooters, pose the greatest risk by far. The scooters have headlights, brakes, bells, and speed limiters. Instead of finding a smart and reasonable way to proceed with progress, even if on a trial basis, the City dropped the ball once again. An agreement on electric scooters would have more likely secured the arrangement with Lime to continue supplying dockless rental bikes in Hartford.

The Users

The blame does not sit solely with those risk averse people in power.

Hartford has set new records for number of Lime bikes stolen. An exact number is not available, but it’s likely somewhere between 300 and 1000. If in the last few months you’ve seen the bikes out in the Hartford area, those are stolen bikes. . . maybe not by the person riding them, but at some point along the line.

It makes no financial sense for a private company to continue investing in a place that has cost them probably in the vicinity of $100,000-$350,000. You break your toys, you get no toys to play with.

The Company

Their initial rollout of bikes in Hartford was flawed. For a few days it was possible to get that first free ride without registering a debit or credit account. This allowed for theft because there was no way to hold these individuals accountable for not returning the bikes. Although Lime caught this error and fixed it, much loss happened early on.

Another thing Lime could have done differently was to get a company representative to do outreach to the neighborhoods several months before the bikes were dropped here. There needed to be better education as to this day there are folks who believe these bicycles are “government bikes.” Granted, it is difficult to get word out to everybody in Hartford, but a better effort upfront would likely have helped people understand that Lime is a private company that can leave at any time.

Finally, their bicycle locks were simply too easy to break. A child with a rock could smash them. Their scooters have a locking mechanism that renders them useless, and there has been talk of their next wave of bikes using a similar, harder-to-break system, but at this point if we want to experience that, we will have to travel outside the region to cities where Lime has found a more receptive market.

 

The City did the right thing by trying out bikeshare, but needs to learn from this experience if it wants to truly be creative and innovative.