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Lime is waging a war against the San Francisco Municipal Transposition Agency (SFMTA), claiming that the organization acted with "unlawful bias" and "tried to punish lime" when it was chose not to grant operating license to San Francisco last month.
Lime has launched an appeal to SFMTA, asking an "impartial hearings officer" to re-evaluate their application to participate in the city's 12-month pilot program for e-scooter providers. SFMTA, however, says it is "confident" in choosing the right companies in Scoot and Skip.
"After a thorough, fair and transparent review process, we are confident that we have selected the strongest candidates to participate in the one-year scooter pilot project," said a spokesperson for SFMTA. in a release provided to TechCrunch. "Scoot and Skip have demonstrated the highest level of commitment to our city's values: putting public safety first, promoting fairness and ensuring accountability. Lime's call will go to an independent auditor for further examination. "
The San Francisco permit process is the result of Lime and his competitors, Bird and Spin, deploy their scooters without permission in the city in March. Under a new city law, which came into effect in June, scooter start-ups can not operate in San Francisco without a license.
Lyft, Skip, Spin, Lime, Scoot, ofo, Razor, CycleHop, USSCooter and Ridecell all applied for this permit in June.
Lime thinks the selection process was unfair and that, because she deployed scooters in the city without asking for permission – the Uber extension model – SFMTA intentionally rejected her application despite her qualifications.
"The SFMTA ignored the fact that Scoot's price is double that of other applicants, including lime, and that Scoot has refused to offer low-income users a cash payment option," Lime wrote. in a statement. "The SFMTA inexplicably avoided the inclusion of these factors as evaluation criteria and instead found Scoot" satisfactory "because they" agreed to comply ".
When Lime learned of his rejection on Aug. 30, CEO Toby Sun said he was disappointed and that he was planning to appeal the decision.
The San Franciscans deserve a fair and transparent process for transportation and mobility. Instead, the SFMTA has selected inexperienced scooter operators who plan to learn on the job at the expense of the public good … SFMTA's management of non-anchored bike and scooter sharing programs has not been transparent from the start. We ask the Mayor's Office and the Supervisory Board to hold the SFMTA responsible for a wrong licensing process. As a San Francisco based company, it's where we live and work. We want to serve this community.
Although Lime failed to convince the San Francisco authorities, he was allowed to operate in Santa Monica last month alongside Bird, Lyft and JUMP Bikes.
Electronic scooters are expected to return to the streets of San Francisco on October 15th.
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