Lime bikes move to Marseille – Lime
- To offer an alternative to the bus but above all to the car on the coast, the city of Marseille is testing a self-service electric bicycle service this summer.
- The Lime stations should complete the network of Le Vélo stations by getting closer to the Calanques and Estaque-Plage.
After electric scooters, self-service electric bikes will make their debut this Sunday in Marseille. First on the coast, since the city has chosen, to launch this new service, the first edition of the “Voie est libre”, a car-free day on the Corniche and L’Estaque-Plage. “There will be a hundred bikes to start, then it will go up to 1,000 bikes,” explains Audrey Gatian, assistant in charge of mobility. Because Lime has just won the tender for this experiment, which will last until September 26.
“We have focused a lot on access to the Calanques, but there is also the northern coast and other parts of the city where we can provide a complementary offer to Le Vélo stations in the metropolis, which do not cover everything. the territory ”, indicates the elected, who does not hide that with the summer, the effort will be concentrated on the access to the beaches. Benjamin Barnathan, the managing director of Lime in France, announced a rate of “1 euro for unlocking and 0.20 euro per minute”.
33 kg bikes
Unlike scooters, electric bikes must be picked up and dropped off at previously geolocated stations. Work is in progress with the operator to define the perimeters. These may change according to their attendance. In a logic of interconnection, Lime bicycles should also be located near metro stations such as Rond-Point-du-Prado for example. “The objective is for the Marseillaises and Marseillais to appropriate this service,” says Audrey Gatian, who will draw an initial assessment at the end of the summer. On the use of bicycles, but also on the environmental impact.
“We all have in mind what happened with the scooters in the sea, clearly it was a big problem,” she continues. Listening to him, the situation has changed: “The operators have developed a whole process, there is much more reliability in the location of machines in the water, and speed in their handling. ”Not to mention that electric bikes weigh 33 kg, a certain weight. The subject had in any case polluted Lime’s relations with the former municipality, which had excluded the leader of the scooter market. It is therefore also a new start in Marseille for the American operator.