People Have Already Destroyed & Littered Lime Electric Scooters Around Montreal (Photos)
At this point with Lime, it's a love them or hate them situation.
- Lime-brand electric scooters hit the streets of Montreal last week and already some people are destroying and littering them.
- Users are supposed to park the scooters in designated areas, but many seem to be neglecting this rule.
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The rules set out by the city for Lime electric scooters are considered some of the strictest in the world. We are one of the few cities where helmets are mandatory, users have to park the scooters in one of the designated zones and even photograph their e-scooter in the correct parking spot, proving they've followed the rules.
There are 239 designated parking spots for e-scooters around the city. Each spot is marked by an image of a white scooter. To be considered legally parked, the e-scooter has to be perpendicular to the sidewalk and only four e-scooters are allowed per spot.
The problem is, a lot of people aren't doing any of this. Lime e-scooters are being discarded randomly throughout the city, much to the dismay of many Montrealers.
Since there are no docking stations, users are leaving their bikes at BIXI stations, abandoned on sidewalks and leaning against buildings, and in one case in the Lachine Canal.
While Lime has two hours to pick up the scooters, they can be fined if it's not done in the allotted amount of time. Users though can only be fined if they don't respect the road safety rules in place.
Most of the parking spaces used now were no-parking zones for cars as they could obstruct the view of drivers. But the hundreds of parking spots still haven't deterred users of Montreal's newest mode of transportation from leaving the e-scooters wherever is convenient.
There was hope that we would be able to handle the rules associated with the e-scooters. But some people saw it coming before the problems even started.
It looks like we won't be getting that behaviour award after all. Within days of the release of Lime, people took to Twitter to complain about where they've seen the e-scooters left and the pictures started rolling in.
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At least two Lime have been vandalized, one looks like it was stripped for parts while another was thrown into the water in the Lachine Canal. Who knows what the purpose of doing either was.
We're not making a very good case for Lime to the Ontario Council with tourists even noticing the littering of bikes across our own city.
Lime itself couldn't even get away with their marketing campaign with Twitter users commenting on the company's photo.
We hope that Lime isn't a total "flop" and that the users who aren't following the basic rules will start to clean up their act.