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Welcome to Micromobility Pro, a bi-weekly publication which is part of The Micromobility Newsletter, where we deep-dive into the financials of micromobility companies and share exclusive insights tailored for professionals and members.
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Contents
- Introduction
- Operator Landscape & Ridership Trends
- Deployment of Vehicles
- Utilisation Ratio
- Growth of Lime
- How Seattle is Actively Supporting the Growth
- Lime’s Perspective
- Challenges on the Path to Growth
- Conclusion
Introduction
64%, 30%, 29% and 74%*(Till September 2025) are the YoY growth of shared micromobility trips in Seattle from 2022 onwards.
We wanted to understand how this model is working, just as many others might. This piece outlines the current state of Seattle’s shared micromobility, based on direct insights from Seattle DOT and recent city data.
Cities everywhere are trying to determine the most effective ways for people to get around.
In Seattle, alongside buses, trains, and cars, you see a lot of shared bikes and electric scooters. Seattle has become a shared micromobility hub not just on the West Coast but is one of the leading cities in the country in terms of total shared micromobility trips. The city isn’t just allowing shared bikes and scooters to exist; it’s actively working to make them an everyday part of how people get around. This support, combined with a growing network of bike lanes, has resulted in year-after-year increases in ridership.
Currently, there are about 359k active members registered in the program. Out of which Lime has about 341k members registered, and the remaining 18k are registered on Bird.
Operator Landscape & Ridership Trends
Ridership has increased significantly year after year since the introduction of shared e-scooters in 2020. By 2022, Seattle had six active shared micromobility operators. Over time, this changed, and now the number of operators has reduced to only 2: Lime and Bird.
The city’s current operator landscape is dominated by Lime, with Bird holding a smaller share. Lime currently accounts for about 95% of the overall trips registered. Lime is the longest-serving operator in Seattle and has been operating since the bike-only permit days in 2017. Meanwhile, Bird entered the space much later through the RFP process conducted by Seattle DoT in 2022.
A key differentiator for Lime has been its longevity and consistent performance. This tenure has allowed them to benefit from SDOT’s performance-based fleet cap system. The city allows operators to increase their fleet sizes based on performance, such as how often each vehicle is used per day, which is trips per vehicle per day, and how well they meet requirements to deploy vehicles equitably across all neighborhoods. In May 2025, Lime launched its new vehicle, the Lime Glider, at full scale and attracted more riders by offering greater choice.
Deployment of Vehicles
Seattle’s shared micromobility trips have grown consistently from just over 2.2m in 2019 to 7.7m in 2025 (as of September 24, 2025). The growth has been driven largely by scooters, with bikes maintaining a steady share and seated scooters showing the strongest recent adoption.
After a sharp decline in 2020, the total number of available units steadily increased, reaching a peak of 15,844 vehicles in 2025. This represents a substantial jump from the 9,383 units available in 2024. In 2025, the company’s fleet expanded dramatically to 13,393 units, accounting for ~85% of the overall vehicles deployed. In May, Lime introduced Lime Gliders in large numbers and increased over each month, reaching 2,763 by September.
Utilisation Rate
Utilisation Rate is the number of Trips registered per Vehicle in a single Day (TVD). Lime’s utilization ratio has steadily improved, rising from 0.8 in 2019 to 2.5 in 2025, making it one of the strongest performers in the region. Its scooters peaked in 2023 at 3.0, while seated scooters gained traction from May 2025. Overall, the industry’s utilization ratio has grown from 1.05 in 2019 to 2.20 in 2025, showing healthier adoption despite the exits of some operators.
Seated scooters, introduced as Lime Gliders, saw rapid adoption with the strongest growth. Utilization jumped from 0.8 in 2023 to 3.9 in 2025, the highest among all vehicle types.
Growth of Lime
Lime shows sustained and dominant growth, rising from 909k trips in 2019 to over 7.3m trips in 2025. Several operators, such as Jump, Wheels, and Spin, exited after 2020-2021, while Veo and Link (Superpedestrian) saw short-lived activity before fading out. Link exited the US market in 2023, citing financial challenges. The year 2022 marked peak competition, with multiple players, including Veo, Bird, Link, and Lime, posting strong trip numbers.
How Seattle is Actively Supporting the Growth
Seattle’s support for micromobility extends far beyond permitting. The city has highlighted a multi-faceted strategy involving political backing, significant infrastructure investment, and creative incentive programs.
The city’s commitment is backed by an executive order from Mayor Bruce Harrell, “on advancing climate resilience and reducing transportation emissions.” This order explicitly ties micromobility to major events like the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with the goal that “80% of attendees will arrive at games and other events without a car.” Shared bikes and scooters are seen as a critical “first and last mile strategy” to achieve this.
SDOT’s “Hot Bike Summer” saw the celebration of the completion of new protected bike lanes across the city. A prime example is the recently completed Beacon Ave S & 15th Ave S Safety Project in North Beacon Hill, which added concrete-protected bike lanes, repaired sidewalks, and installed new ADA-accessible curb ramps.
This infrastructure is complemented by programs. The flagship Bike and Scoot to Transit program, a partnership with King County Metro and Sound Transit, incentivizes multimodal trips by offering riders who end a scooter or bike ride at a designated transit hub a free transit ticket and can earn points redeemable for $7 in shared micromobility credits. This directly addresses the cost barrier and promotes micromobility as a feeder to the regional transit system.
With one-third of residents being nondrivers, initiatives like the Week Without Driving (September 29 - October 5, 2025), started by Disability Rights Washington, support a transportation system that serves everyone.
To manage the influx of vehicles, SDOT is also building out a robust parking network, including mandatory parking zones in high-traffic areas like stadiums, creating a semi-docked system that mitigates clutter. Furthermore, the city enforces equity and safety through permit requirements, mandating safety quizzes for first-time riders and supporting free helmet programs to ensure responsible growth.
SDOT’s Senior Transportation Planner, Kim Pearson, emphasized this ongoing investment: “Our bike network is continuing to expand... we’re cutting the ribbon on new bike lanes and making miles-long connections all around Seattle.”
Lime’s Perspective
From Lime’s viewpoint, Seattle’s success is a testament to a powerful public-private partnership built on local understanding. Attributing their growth to a “hyperlocal approach,” Lime’s Senior Regional Lead, Parker Dawson, highlighted the critical role of the city’s supportive policies and physical investments. He noted that Seattle’s continuous expansion of protected bike lanes has been essential for improving the riding experience in a challenging, hilly, and rainy environment.
Lime has also leaned into vehicle innovation to broaden appeal, finding great success with the launch of the seated LimeGlider scooter, which has already seen over one million trips in Seattle since its May 2025 introduction, demonstrating that “giving riders more options leads to higher ridership overall.”
Challenges on the Path to Growth
Despite its remarkable successes, Seattle’s micromobility program is not without its growing pains, which SDOT confronts with transparency. The primary challenge is managing the program’s own popularity. As ridership soars past 7 million trips, the demand for both parking spaces and safe riding corridors has intensified, leading to complaints even as new bike lanes are built. “They’ll build a new bike lane, and it quickly becomes pretty busy, pretty congested, and can drive more demand for new places to ride, which is a great problem to have,” SDOT acknowledged.
Another challenge is data collection, particularly around safety. The city explained that accurately tracking incidents is difficult because standard police collision reports lack specific fields for e-scooters or e-bikes and rarely differentiate between shared and private devices, making precise safety analysis a complex task.
Conclusion
Seattle’s success is simple. The city decided to work with micromobility companies, not just manage them. They built safe places to ride, created programs that make it easy and affordable to choose a scooter or bike, and set clear rules that reward good service.
The result is a city where more and more people have a real, practical alternative to sitting in traffic. It’s a proven model: when you make it safe, easy, and affordable, people will choose to ride.
The excitement for what has been built and what is yet to come is best captured by Kim Pearson, Senior Transportation Planner at SDOT:
“To reiterate that we’ve seen tremendous growth in shared micromobility ridership in Seattle. More and more people are using shared micromobility for short trips, for connecting to transit, for going to work, school, social activities, healthcare, and more... And the appeal across age groups and different demographics has really, I think, grown over the past few years as shared micromobility really hits its stride in Seattle. And, we will just continue to innovate and partner with the vendors operating in our city..., it’s been an exciting time here for sure.”
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