Public e-scooters and e-bikes are now available in all parts of Lethbridge after Neuron expanded its service on May 4. Since the program’s launch in April, thousands of Lethbridge riders have travelled over 40,000 kms in the city, with an average rider journey of 2.6 kms, according to the company.
“We have just been very happy with the overall reception of the city and it’s allowed us to expand into the north less than a month after launching operations,” said Daniel Rodrigo, Alberta regional manager for Neuron.
He said the company had plans to expand to the north since the start, but it ended up happening much sooner than expected. Along with expanding coverage, Neuron added 100 scooters this month. At launch the service was available in west and south Lethbridge.
“Lethbridge in and of itself is relatively large in terms of geographical area so the way we go about it is we pick where we think the higher ridership will be and it allows us to scale operationally in a way that makes sense,” he said. “The last thing we want to do is not provide the users with a great experience so by starting a little bit smaller, ensuring that the ridership is there and that we are operationally sound, then we look to expand as quickly as we can.”
Rodrigo said Neuron hires local people who know the city. The company has mechanics to do maintenance and crews to swap batteries and move scooters to high demand areas.
Both scooters and e-bikes can be ridden in the city, but Rodrigo said the fleet of bikes is smaller. “We will be expanding both our scooter and bike fleet size so you will be seeing even more of them popping up as the weather warms up and more people get out there.”
He said the company is very pleased with the reception in Lethbridge and it saw high ridership from the start. He added it has been on par with other cities in terms of maintenance for scooters.
“For the most part people have been great. These are devices that are out there for people to ride so there is never not going to be any damage to them but it’s in line with what we have seen in all of our other markets and it’s been overall very positive,” he said. “People for the most part treat them very well and everything is great.”
Downtown and local parks are proving to be popular routes, with Henderson Park, Galt Gardens and Nicholas Sheran Park being hot spots for riders to start and end their journeys.