Lime scooter hopes to expand in Spokane, making promises but asking for concessions

May 14-Eight years after first planting roots in Spokane, Lime is asking the city to grow.

Micromobility giant Neutron Holdings is asking Spokane to extend and expand its contract to operate Lime scooters and bikes in city limits after seeing steady growth in ridership in recent years, although at least one improvement promised two years ago has yet to bear fruit.

Lime - which has a city-approved monopoly to operate in Spokane - is asking to boost the local fleet to 2,000 vehicles this year and 2,250 starting in 2027, up from the current limit of 1,500. It also wants to add a half-bike, half-scooter contraption Lime calls a "Glider," and permanently expand its operations into the winter, which it piloted for the first time earlier this year .

Lime ridership in Spokane has nearly doubled in recent years, with a reported 370,000 trips in 2022 and 674,000 in 2025, though the city's revenue from the company hasn't grown by much in comparison, from $190,000 in 2022 to $225,000 in 2025. Under the current two-year contract, set to expire at the end of 2026 unless it is extended, Lime pays Spokane $17,000 a year plus 75 cents per vehicle per day it's on city streets.

If the company permanently expands its winter operations, it is requesting the city to lower the daily fee from 75 cents to 33 cents during the winter months, arguing its revenue declines significantly during that period. Asked to provide data on how much ridership declines during the winter months, a Lime spokesperson instead sent a statement simply saying that "the adjusted fee would support Lime in maintaining and expanding service through the winter..."

As of today, users must pay $1 to unlock a Lime vehicle and an additional 44 cents per minute the device is in use. Despite record revenue of $886.7 million in 2025, Lime remains an unprofitable company, losing a reported $59.3 million in the same year.

Two years ago, it wasn't clear that Lime would continue to operate on Spokane's streets amid concerns about scooters being dumped and left in the Spokane River, improper parking clogging city sidewalks, and scooters scooting at high speed along downtown sidewalks - the only area of the city where it is currently illegal to do so, though some City Council members have expressed interest in expanding this ban. Amid negotiations, no Lime scooters could be found in Spokane that spring.

The company was eventually awarded the contract that June: Lime would still get to be the only electric scooter ride-sharing service to operate in Spokane, and in return it committed to removing scooters from the river within 24 hours. The company also vowed to issue fines to riders who improperly parked and blocked sidewalks, and to find a way to prevent the devices from being driven on downtown sidewalks.

On some fronts, it appears to have largely met those commitments. Jule Schultz, cleanup director for the Spokane Riverkeeper, told The Spokesman-Review in mid-2025 that scooters were being quickly fished out of the river; on Thursday, Schultz confirmed this was still largely the case, though the organization's Water Protector Katelyn Scott noted in an email that there have been cases where the devices have not been removed within the required 24 hours.

"There is also a fee structure if devices aren't removed within the required timeframe, though I don't know if the city has ever actually enforced it," Scott added.

City spokeswoman Erin Hut confirmed Thursday that the city has not issued any of the slow-removal fines allowed under the contract, but has instead removed lingering scooters from the river and passed the bill on to Lime.

Lime also reports that it doubled its enforcement for riders who are improperly parking their devices. The fines, which Lime keeps, are relatively nominal, ranging from a warning for the first violation to $40 for the fourth, though the fifth violation is supposed to lock a rider out of using Lime scooters.

Lime reported that it issued nearly 1,900 warnings and 62 fines in 2025, compared to roughly 940 warnings and 29 fines in 2024.

But at least one pledge remains unfulfilled: preventing users from riding on downtown sidewalks. As early as 2022, Lime was showcasing technology it claimed could detect when a rider was on a sidewalk, alerting the rider and also forcibly slowing them down, similarly to the reduced speeds the scooters assume in Riverfront Park. In 2024, the company told Spokane that it would work to implement the technology in the city.

Fast-forward to present day, and scooters continue to be driven unimpeded on downtown Spokane sidewalks. An "increasing number" of Lime's vehicles in the city have been fitted with "Lime Vision," the AI computer vision technology developed by the company for sidewalk detection, to collect data before a full rollout, and those devices do audibly alert riders on downtown sidewalks, wrote Parker Dawson, senior regional lead of government relations at Lime, in a Thursday statement.

"Lime is now expanding deployment to increase coverage across the city, with a continued focus on downtown areas," Dawson wrote. "As this technology scales, Lime will increase LV2 presence throughout the city through 2026 and into 2027, and will include real-time rider notifications to discourage sidewalk riding."

Lime did not provide a timeline for rollout. In March, the Seattle Times reported that Lime would retrofit the first of Seattle's scooters with the technology by mid-April, half of the city's 3,500-vehicle fleet by June and the rest by year's end.

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This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 11:44 PM.