Every Lime Bike in Seattle will be electric soon.
Every Lime Bike in Seattle will be electric soon. Lester Black

Lime is currently pulling all of their fully-manual bicycles out of Seattle and replacing them with electric bikes under a plan that will turn their entire rideshare fleet fully electric by next month, according to a company spokesperson.

ā€œLime has begun pulling pedal bikes out of Seattle as part of a planned shift to 100 percent electric bikes in 2019. This was included in Limeā€™s application to the city, which was filed in August 2018,ā€ said Veronica Brown, a spokesperson for the company. ā€œLimeā€™s bike fleet in Seattle will be all electric by mid-March.ā€

Limeā€™s transition is likely to make fans of the electric-assist bicycles happy but it will also mean a substantial increase in the minimum amount of money it takes to operate one of the green bicycles as Lime removes the cheaper manual bicycles. The electric bicycles cost $1 to unlock and $0.15 per minute of riding, whereas the fully manual cycles cost $1 to unlock and only $0.05 per minute of riding. Lime raised their rates in September after two of their competitors left town.

Brown didnā€™t elaborate on why the company decided to change its fleet, but it might be because of riders like me. I end up riding a Lime Bike multiple days a week and I always take an electric version if I can find one. This electric-first rule even includes my most common route from The Strangerā€™s office on Capitol Hill to Downtown where I catch a bus. This route involves riding the bicycle less than a mile almost entirely down a hill. I only need to pedal a handful of times, yet I still opt for the electric bicycle out of laziness. Pretty soon Lime will take that choice out of my hands.