Lime suspends electric scooter negotiations in Marina

You likely won’t see any Lime electric scooters around Marina anytime soon. The company recently suspended negotiations with the City of Marina along with removing scooters from Cal State Monterey Bay’s campus in May.

Lime used to have more than 200 scooters CSUMB, but now that the one-year contract has ended students will have to look for other transportation options.

Despite 115,000 rides on campus between September 2018 and May 2019, the company pulled all it’s scooters after commencement.

“As we do continue to grow, and the campus continues to expand, we need to look at solutions for our students, faculty and staff to be able to rapidly get across campus and lime was a great solution to that,” Cal State Monterey Bay’s public information officer Noah Rappahahn said.

In a statement to KION, Lime said the company had a “close and successful partnership” with CSUMB and they remain hopeful they can “find a long-term partnership tailored to the needs of the region.”

The city of Marina was also looking into bringing the scooters to other parts of town, but Lime and city leaders could not reach an agreement on insurance provisions.

Marina’s Assistant City Manger Matt Mogensen told KION Lime wanted an insurance level at $2 million per claim and $4 million aggregate, the same deal it had with CSUMB.
But the city wanted double that-requesting $5 million per occurrence and $5 million aggregate.

“It was the advice of our risk management to further protect the city against claims from injured people,” Mogensen said.

City leaders aren’t ruling out the possibility of Lime or another electric scooter company coming back to the region in the future, but it remains to be seen.