Previously completely banned from the UK’s roads, the Department for Transport this year opened the doors for cities to trial new schemes for renting e-scooters on the country’s roads in a bid to discourage workers from using their cars. Next week sees one of those trials arrive in Salford…
The company behind the e-scooter trial is Lime, a US-based company that operates in London, Milton Keynes and throughout the US and Europe. Their recent trail in Milton Keynes has been a great success apparently, with 20,000 users in the first month alone.
So Salford looks set to benefit from some swanky new electric scooter action, with them costing just £1 to unlock and then 15p per minute thereafter. The scooters are also fitted with an alarm which will go off if someone tries to move it without unlocking it – meaning residents of Salford may have a new annoying noise to listen to by this time next week.
Salford City Council and the University of Salford are happy to be ‘guinea pigs’ for the new scheme and promise that the lessons learnt with the disastrous Mobike scheme in Manchester a couple of years back won’t be repeated here.
So keep an eye out on the streets of Salford next week for the Lime scooters – and if you get on one – let us know how the experience was.
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