Everything you need to know about Charlotte’s dockless scooters and bikes
There has been a surge in dockless scooter and bike brands arriving in Charlotte this year, particularly in the South End, Dilworth and Uptown neighborhoods.
Here’s what we learned about the bike and scooter brands that are taking over Charlotte’s sidewalks (and streets):
Bikes
Price: $1 to ride for 30 minutes and under, must load $5 to account to start; $14 monthly membership for unlimited 30-minute rides.
Accessibility: This was the most common bike we encountered.
Price: $1 for 30 minutes and under, must add $5 to account to start.
Accessibility: Compared to the other apps, the number of bikes displayed on the Mobike app was relatively low. We didn’t see anyone riding any in the city.
Price: $1 for 30 minutes, must load $10 to your account to start
Accessibility: Out of all the bikes, the LimeBike was the least common one that we encountered, although the map of bikes locations in the app was full. Maybe they were all in use?
While not in the dockless category, we can’t leave out Charlotte’s original bike-share.
Price: $8 24-hour pass with unlimited two-hour rides (as long as bike is docked), and $4 for each additional 120 minutes
Accessibility: B-cycle bikes can be found on 28 docking racks located around the city and must be returned to the rack to end the ride. All the racks we encountered were mostly full.
Scooters
Price: $1 to get started, then $0.15 per minute.
Max speed: 15 mph
Accessibility: By far the most accessible scooter. We saw no fewer than 10 people zooming around on these scooters.
Price: $1 to unlock, $0.15 per minute to ride, must load $10 to account to start (this factors into your LimeBike account as well)
Max speed: 14.8 mph
Accessibility: Fairly accessible, but Bird seems to have taken over the whole city.
Spin service was reportedly scheduled to begin in conjunction with Bird service in May. But … we haven’t seen any.
Price: Couldn’t tell you
Max speed: 15 mph according to legend (and Google), 0 mph for us
Accessibility: Not accessible
This story was originally published August 1, 2018 at 1:11 PM.