Lime set a huge new ridership record the day of the U.S. World Cup match against Australia by carrying 84K trips on its bikes and scooters. If Lime were a roadway, it would be tied with the 1st Avenue South Bridge for the third-busiest highway in Seattle behind only I-5 (195K main deck plus 40K Express at Ship Canal or 246K in SoDo) and I-90 (139K at the Mount Baker Tunnel). It’s more than the West Seattle Bridge (71K), the 520 Bridge (66K), SR-99 (65K in SoDo, dropping to 51K in the downtown tunnel), Mercer Street (59K), and the Ballard Bridge (49K). Data is based on available WSDOT and SDOT traffic and micromobility counts. Link light rail, meanwhile, carried 280,000 trips June 19, about 34,000 more trips than an average day on I-5. This was likely the first time since it opened in 1967 that I-5 was not the busiest piece of transportation infrastructure in Washington State. It will not be the last.
The fact that a couple thousand electric bikes and scooters with 15 mph limits operated by a company that pays Seattle permit fees are carrying trip volumes higher than pieces of infrastructure that cost the public billions is difficult to comprehend. It defies assumptions about how much space is required to move people, and it should trigger a lot of questions about how we think about moving people and goods around the city. Not even counting the many thousands of people riding their own personal bikes and scooters (we do not have a good way to measure this figure citywide), Lime alone carried one third as many trips as I-5. Everyone should sit with that fact for a moment and consider the implications and challenge their own assumptions.
Sure, the World Cup is not here every day, but the event is a chance to preview how the city might function if it continues to grow and become more densely-populated in the years ahead. At least some freeways actually saw a decrease on June 19, though not all have count data from that day. I-90 does have June 19 data, and it shows about 7,000 fewer vehicles than an average day. People chose to avoid driving into Seattle to avoid the expected traffic crunch, instead choosing walking, biking and transit. Cars make less and less sense the more people are in a place, so we can add people and decrease driving at the same time, resulting in a plummeting driving rate.
Whenever anyone mentions the idea of people switching away from cars, the idea is followed immediately by people listing specific cases where cars or trucks are needed: Heavy freight, access vans, etc. But we aren’t talking about banning all uses of cars and trucks here, we’re talking about people with other options switching to those other options. There are still a lot of people who are driving everywhere purely out of habit even though traffic is awful and parking is difficult. But as walking, biking and transit options keep getting better, we will continue seeing more people shift more trips away from driving. There are a lot of people suffering alone in unpredictable traffic today who maybe don’t even realize that transit or biking could get them there in a comparable or even shorter amount of time. There are a lot of people who don’t yet realize the extra minutes it might take to ride the bus or a bike are well worth the trade off in terms of happiness and health. Each car trip that turns into a walking, biking or transit trip is one less car clogging up highways and parking spaces or polluting our air and water with deadly exhaust and tire pollution.
Another way to think about it is to consider how much better public space is when it is dedicated to people rather than cars. A photo by Best Side Cycling led us to an interesting thought experiment: If the parking lot dedicated to Lime bikes and scooters were instead a parking garage for the same number of vehicles, how big would it need to be, and what would the experience be like for users?