Lime to pull e-bike share services from the North Shore this month | Daily Hive

Lime e-bike share at Lonsdale in North Vancouver. (City of North Vancouver)

By the end of this month, Lime will be withdrawing its e-bike share services from the North Shore communities of Metro Vancouver.

In a statement on Thursday, the City of North Vancouver, which also oversees the e-bike share service on behalf of the District of North Vancouver and the District of West Vancouver, announced the San Francisco-based micro-mobility giant will end its service on June 30, 2025, when their permit to operate expires.

While Lime is leaving, the City has selected a new e-bike share operator to take its place, with the identity of the operator to be announced in the coming days. The municipal government does not expect an interruption in e-bike share service on the North Shore.

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“We are excited to continue offering the e-bike share program on the North Shore. Thanks to the program, the North Shore has experienced growing numbers of e-bike users as residents and visitors alike enjoyed the availability of more sustainable transportation options,” said Jennifer Draper, deputy director of transportation for the City of North Vancouver, in a statement.

“We look forward to announcing a new service provider soon, and to the continued growth of this valuable program for our communities.”

Lime first launched its e-bike share service as a pilot project in the City of North Vancouver and District of North Vancouver in July 2021, before expanding into the District of West Vancouver in July 2022. Then, in 2023, all three municipal governments approved the transition of this trial into a permanent service, but not necessarily with the same operator.

In 2024, the Squamish Nation reached an agreement with Lime to bring the services to the North Shore reserves.

While conducting a procurement process for a permanent service — which also included Lime as a participant — the City extended Lime’s contract to ensure continuity of service. But ultimately, it is now apparent that the municipal government has chosen to ride in a different direction.

In an email to Daily Hive Urbanized, Sonia Kandola, the senior director of government relations for Lime, said that, over the company’s history on the North Shore, riders took over 326,000 trips and travelled a distance of 738,000 km.

“After four successful years as the exclusive shared e-bike operator on the North Shore, Lime will conclude its e-bike program in the region for the time being,” said Kandola, adding that “Lime is proud to have built a program that delivered a convenient and sustainable transportation option to the community.”

Within Metro Vancouver, Lime also operates shared micromobility services in Richmond since May 2022, which was renewed by Richmond City Council earlier this year for another three-year term with two one-year options, as well as Coquitlam since July 2023 and New Westminster since August 2024.

In September 2024, Lime made its largest expansion in Metro Vancouver to date, after securing the contract to operate a e-scooter share service in the City of Vancouver. As a requirement of the municipal government, Lime created a made-for-Vancouver solution of rolling out a e-bike share service with locking docking parking stations. Lime has free-floating systems elsewhere in the world; the system that exists in Vancouver is the first of its kind for the company.

The e-scooter share service was first rolled out to the Hastings-Sunrise and Grandview-Woodland neighbourhoods before being expanded to Strathcona and Mount Pleasant.

Earlier this month, Lime completed the major expansion of bringing its e-scooter share services across the downtown Vancouver peninsula. There will be further expansions in other areas of the city at a later time.

Lime holds an initial five-year contract with the City of Vancouver, which can be renewed for three additional five-year terms for a total of up to 20 years. The company is covering all capital and operating costs, requiring no investment from the municipal government, which stands to gain revenue from the contract.

In more recent months, due to political reasons, there has been some pushback against awarding public sector contracts to companies based in the United States. Lime’s direct competitor, Bird Canada, went as far as asking the City to reconsider its contract made with Lime in Summer 2024.

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