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I’ll be honest — I’ve never really loved the standup-scooter trend for vehicle-sharing programs in cities. I think they are fine for light, commercial recreation and for last-mile transport for some people. But they are quite unstable, tiny, and so hard to notice. I love bicycles and old-school scooters that you sit on for such programs, though. The e-scooters still require quite a bit more safety awareness from riders than slower-moving bicycles, but they are more visible, sturdier, and seem to encourage safer riding than the standup scooters. They are also simply more comfortable and enjoyable for a lot of people. News out of Seattle sure supports that latter point.
Seattle’s fleet of shared bikes and electric scooters added the LimeGlider last year, and that seems to have boosted ridership significantly. Compared to 2024, ridership was up a stunning 61% as of the middle of last month. The LimeGlider is a small sit-down scooter, not quite a Vespa but not quite a bike. See the picture above.
The Seattle personal mobility program is actually quite huge. People took 9.7 million trips using the program in 2025. Yes, 9.7 million. Think about how many emissions are avoided from people not driving those millions upon millions of miles. In August alone, 1.3 million trips were taken on the Lime scooters and bikes. On September 27 alone, 60,000 trips were made on Lime scooters and bikes.
The program also worked on cutting the “clutter” it had led to around the city last fall, by adding 200 more bike and scooter corrals in downtown Seattle.
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