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Edinburg approves one-year contract with Lime scooter company

2 years 5 months 3 weeks ago Wednesday, October 06 2021 Oct 6, 2021 October 06, 2021 9:43 AM October 06, 2021 in News - Local

After more than a year, electric scooters are making its way back into the Rio Grande Valley.

The city of Edinburg on Tuesday entered into a one-year contract with the company Lime, with the opportunity for it to be renewed if the city chooses.

As many as 150 e-scooters could be coming in as soon as the next 60 days.

Edinburg Assistant City Manager Brian Kelsey gave council members background information before a unanimous agreement for the deployment of 150 electric scooters.

“As the year goes on, we’ll reconfigure — figure out if we need to move that number up,” Kelsey said.

In late 2019, Edinburg City Council approved a pilot program for the company Blue Duck in 2020, but due to the challenges of the pandemic, that six-month program only lasted three.

READ ALSO: Edinburg Starts Pilot Program for Electric Scooters  

“It was a pretty successful program,” Kelsey said. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to draw a conclusions off just half the time period that it was designed for.”

Similar to that pilot program, Kelsey said the Lime scooters will only be for the shoulder and bike lanes.

A spokesperson for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley said its campus prohibits ride-sharing devices owned by vendors.

Kelsey says the city will happily abide by UTRGV’s policy, even stating he believes the program could generate more than $10,000 in revenue in its first year as it provides more transportation for the public.

“We don’t want to add more cars to the road if we can help is, so we think this will be a viable option to hopefully reduce traffic, provide better access for transportation solutions,” Kelsey said.

To a program that’s been well-established in cities like Corpus Christi, the city of Edinburg is happy to get back to speed to where they were before the pandemic changed everything.

“We really see this as an opportunity to kind of pick up where that program left off,” Kelsey said.

The rate to ride a scooter is $1 to start and an estimated thirty cents for every minute.

Whatever the rate ends up being set here, the city will get 15 cents for every ride.

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