Tuesday: Community Council forum on ‘scooter public safety’ + It’s time to take bike and scooter share seriously

Seattle was the first major and lasting launch city for Lime back in July 2017, and the city has continued to be one of the company's strongest markets globally. In the last year (November 2024 through November 2025), Lime and Bird reported an astounding 10.3 million trips in Seattle, according to SDOT's data dashboard (96% of those trips were on Lime). Over the year, bike and scooter share carried about 60% as many trips as the state's $2.15 billion SR-99 highway tunnel under downtown Seattle. During summer months, that number may have been more like 80%.

Bike and scooter share is a major part of Seattle's transportation system today, yet the city still has not fully adapted to support it in a comprehensive manner. While the public subsidizes driving to the tune of billions, these companies actually pay Seattle for permits to operate here. Yet despite some city work to add bike and scooter parking areas in select locations (largely funded by scooter and bike permit fees), the vast majority of the devices are parked on sidewalks wherever users could find a spot. This leads to bikes and scooters blocking walkways, curb cuts and other sidewalk access needs whether due to inconsiderate parking by users or passersby knocking them over. A blocked walkway may be annoying for someone who can step around a fallen device, but it is a serious mobility blockage for people who cannot.

Meanwhile, though the city has been building more protected bike lanes, they are nowhere close to keeping up with the demand for safe bike and scooter routes. The result is the frustrating and persistent problem of people riding scooters on sidewalks. Sidewalk riding is uncomfortable for people walking, and it is also not a good solution for people riding bikes and scooters. Some of the problem may be inconsiderate user habits, but the much bigger problem is a lack of safe bike lanes. You are far more likely to experience someone riding a scooter on a sidewalk along a street filled with car traffic, such as the one where this most often happens to me: NE 45th Street in the U District. Sure, they are supposed to ride in traffic, but have you seen traffic?!?

While bike and scooter share ridership in Seattle is a major success story, problems with sidewalk riding and walkway blockages are a persistent source of justified complaints (along with some over-the-top complaints) that are not going away. The Urban Community Councils of Seattle are hosting a Scooter Public Safety Forum" 6 p.m. Tuesday (December 2) at Plymouth Church at 6th and University downtown. Unfortunately, the event description only mentions scooter speeding, sidewalk riding, and parking chaos" and not the safety needs of scooter riders. Hopefully that is also part of the discussion. Here's the event description:

Speeding, sidewalk riding, and parking chaos! Join us for a forum with Lime Scooters to talk about steps they are taking to address safety. Scooter safety is top of everyone's minds these days. Seattle has the third largest Lime ridership in the world and is well-positioned for prioritized solutions. Join us for a presentation and audience Q&A with Lime Scooters on what they are doing to address scooter speeding, sidewalk riding, and parking chaos."

As with any group, the vast majority of people riding scooters want to behave in a proper manner and would gladly use a safe bike lane if there was one. But when presented with the no-win options of a busy street that feels unsafe or a sidewalk, we cannot be surprised when many people choose the sidewalk. It is human nature to prioritize self-preservation. There are always going to be a few total jerks, especially from a pool of over 10 million rides per year, but most scooter riders just want to get where they're going like everyone else. This is a mainstream way to get around, and the people riding bike and scooter share are also community members, and I hope Tuesday's conversation keeps that in mind.

The good news is that we already know the solutions to both the scooter and bike share parking and sidewalk riding problems. For parking, the city needs to install way more parking corrals. We have a mere fraction as many as are needed. Even better, if the city installed enough bike and scooter parking, such as at least one corral at every intersection, then we could change the rules to allow the devices to be parked only within designated areas. I think this is a worthy goal, and it would be great to see the city and the companies work out together what it would take to achieve it.

For sidewalk riding the answer is also obvious: Bike lanes. This is a serious mode of transportation, and it needs dedicated space. Bike lanes not only reduce sidewalk riding, they are also part of street safety projects that can dramatically improve crosswalk safety. Likewise, on-street bike and scooter corrals can be located in the space where it is already illegal to park a car, further improving crosswalk safety by daylighting intersections so people driving can better see people about the cross the street. This strategy was a huge part of how Hoboken, New Jersey, has gone 8 years without a traffic fatality. Seattle has had success with on-street corrals, too, but we need way, way, way more of them. Every commercial intersection would be a start, and there could even be two or four of them at each intersection to cover all the approaches.

How daylighting intersections makes them safer, from the National Association of City Transportation Officials, of which SDOT is a contributing member.

We are still thinking too small about bike and scooter use. It is unreasonable to expect that painting some rectangles on the sidewalk should be enough to handle the huge and increasing number of trips they are carrying around our city. We invest billions in public dollars and reserve the vast majority of public space in order to move people and goods around our city and region, and we need to be willing to dedicate resources to bikes and scooters, as well.

There are more scooters than there used to be

Does it feel like there are more scooters and bikes out there these days? It's not your imagination, but it's for a good reason. When Lime added about 2,600 sit-down scooters in May the city did not require them to remove stand-up scooters or bikes to maintain a total fleet count. The sit-down scooters are designed to be more accessible so people who are not able or comfortable riding a bike or stand-up scooter are still able to use Lime to get around. However, stand-up scooters remain the most profitable device type, so if the city required companies to choose between them, profit would direct companies to prioritize stand-up scooters. By allowing an additional allotment, Lime was able to add sit-down scooters without cannibalizing their own business. The data suggests it has been a success.

Lime's record-smashing year saw a 4.29 million ride increase over the previous year, thanks in part to the company's rollout of their Glider sit-down scooters (they did a small test starting in late 2024, but didn't add them in significant numbers until May and June 2025). Lime-reported data shows that users took 6.73 million stand-up scooter trips (about 6,600 deployed), 1.78 million sit-down scooter trips (about 2,600 deployed starting in May) and 1.4 million bike trips (about 3,100 deployed). They are still new enough that we don't yet know how long the devices will last or how ridership trends will develop, but it seems like they slot in well between bikes and stand-up scooters.

Perhaps most tellingly, adding Gliders did not result in a reduction in stand-up scooter and bike trips, which both saw record ridership on their own. This suggests that Seattle is still in the phase where adding devices results in an even larger increase in ridership, a phenomenon that became very well-known back during the first dockless bike share boom that started in China nearly a decade ago. Companies observed this pattern and responded by adding more and more bikes until the sheer volume of bikes overwhelmed cities, resulting in world-famous photos of towering piles of bike share bikes. SDOT's strategy for avoiding such a problem was to issue permits that limited the number of devices a company could operate at any given time. This artificial limit means that we do not know what Seattle's bike and scooter ride ceiling might be if we found a way to responsibly add more devices to the streets. It's pretty exciting to consider the potential, especially if rides were also more affordable. Perhaps the city could work out a deal to make rides more affordable in return for significant new public investment in bike and scooter parking. The city already requires a reduced cost program for folks who qualify (including anyone with an ORCA Lyft card), but ride prices are also a bit steep for middle-income folks who might otherwise make it a regular part of their transportation habits.