Gas prices drive e-bike, scooter use to new records in Denver, Lyft and Lime report

It’s a scooter and e-bike season not like any earlier than within the Mile Excessive Metropolis. Booming ridership is giving multimodal transportation advocates one thing to cheer for and in addition some causes for concern.

Lyft noticed record-shattering journey totals on its electrical scooters and bikes in Denver final month amid painfully excessive fuel costs and a busy month within the metropolis’s core anchored by the Colorado Avalanche’s Stanley Cup championship run.

The hefty numbers — greater than 308,000 riders in June, in accordance with Lyft, — are additional proof, multimodal transportation advocates say, that demand for choices exterior of automobiles continues to be rising in Denver and town must proceed investing in infrastructure like protected bike lanes.

“People are more and more turning away from non-public automobiles and making micromobility a part of their every day routine — and right now’s fuel costs make bikes and scooters much more interesting,” Josh Johnson, a senior coverage supervisor with Lyft, stated Friday.

Lime, the one different micromobility operator approved to work in Denver, units new ridership data month-to-month, in accordance with spokeswoman Russell Murphy.

June was no completely different. The corporate noticed almost 325,000 rides on its green-accented scooters and purple electrical bikes. That an 83% 12 months over 12 months for June and up 17% in comparison with Might, Murphy stated.

“As in different cities, fuel costs have undoubtedly boosted ridership as people look to extra inexpensive choices to get round. We additionally see the return of commuting and summer time journey taking part in a task,” Murphy instructed the Denver Publish.

Survey outcomes point out that 43% of individuals utilizing Lyft’s e-bikes achieve this for commuting functions, Lyft officers stated.

Lyft and Lime each signed 5 year-contracts with town in 2021 and are approved to have fleets of as much as 2,344 scooters and roughly 469 electrical bikes.

Lyft shared journey totals courting again to 2018. At the moment, Lyft and Lime had been amongst a handful of operators with smaller scooter fleets on town’s streets. In August of that 12 months, Lyft registered 25,673 rides. In July 2021, riders took the corporate’s pink-tinged bikes and scooters out for 254,448 rides, a then-record.

Then June of this 12 months rolled round and fuel at Denver stations began promoting for near $5 a gallon and the Avs lastly returned to the highest of the hockey world. The corporate’s inner information exhibits that in Avalanche playoff video games, ridership in Denver went up almost 50% in comparison with on the identical occasions final 12 months, Lyft officers stated.

Jill Locantore is the chief director of the nonprofit Denver Streets Partnership, which advocates for “people-friendly streets.” She was happy to listen to in regards to the report ridership totals. All the issues with Denver’s transportation community — air pollution, site visitors fatalities, congestion, and many others. — come again to an overdependence on automobiles, she stated.

“Mainly, something smaller, slower and extra inexpensive than a automotive is nice for fixing these issues and principally creating the type of metropolis all of us say we need to reside in,” Locantore stated. “The issue is we don’t have the protected infrastructure to accommodate these modes.”

Lyft backs Mayor Michael Hancock’s five-year plan to construct 125 miles of motorcycle lanes by 2024 and helps metropolis and state efforts to subsidize extra individuals using e-bikes, officers stated.

Whereas Denver has come a good distance in increasing its bike community, lots of the lanes don’t present bodily obstacles between customers and lanes of automotive site visitors, Locantore stated. Extra electrical automobiles like scooters utilizing the bike lanes additionally improve the probabilities for battle between these gadgets and folks on conventional bikes. She desires to see extra space given to non-car modes of journey to cut back congestion.

Not each scooter and e-bike rider follows metropolis guidelines to keep away from using on sidewalks. It’s a priority that has sparked outrage in Denver’s Decrease Downtown neighborhood and has District 10 Metropolis Councilman Chris Hinds wanting into new laws that might mandate Lyft and Lime use expertise to throttle automobile speeds on sidewalks.

Lyft officers say their scooters will all have new decals by August telling riders to get off the sidewalk. Within the meantime, Hinds says he has a gathering with the corporate within the coming weeks and hopes for a constructive dialog about security. Pedestrians, dad and mom with strollers, wheelchair customers and others ought to all be thought of in the case of constructing a greater transportation community, he stated.

“It essential for us to interrupt our dependence on automobiles,” Hinds stated, “and scooters and micromobility will be a part of the answer as long as individuals really feel protected getting round our metropolis.”