Using Lime Scooters & Jump Bikes In Washington, DC

We recently spent a few weeks in the Washington, DC area. My best friend Mary came up to visit for a few days and we stayed in a fancy hotel, ate terrible snacks, stayed up way too late and had a blast seeing the city. As there are COVID-19 restrictions and we wanted to be as safe as possible, we stayed outside a lot.

One thing that made our weekend so much fun was using Jump Bikes and Lime Scooters. We used a 24-hour pass which came with stipulations of 30 minute rides or less to keep it within that one charge. Was it worth it? Read on to find out.

When we went out on Saturday night we rode Lime Scooters for snacks at 7-Eleven in the middle of the night (as you do). This was Mary’s first time scootering around, although I’m a pro from our trip in San Antonio in 2018. Scootering to 7-Eleven and back cost us $12.77; this was about a mile on scooters plus some walking – more on that later.

We thought about how fun the Jump Bikes looked which we saw around the city. They’re electric bikes, so you pedal and the bike also helps which is great for longer distances and hills. Side note: THEY ARE SO FUN!! We also saw that there was a 24-hour pass that we could get for $16.99. Mary and I talked it over and decided that the bikes would be the way to go since we planned to go to the zoo and see as much as we could around the city on Sunday.

The following morning we headed out, ready to take full advantage of our 24-hour pass. We each paid our $16.99 and read the fine print. If you go over a 30 minute ride on the pass it starts to charge you $0.32 per minute. You can find bikes and scooters using the Lime app and even reserve bikes or scooters for up to 30 minutes.

We’re no dummies and wanted to make the very most of the one-time price, so we set an alarm for 22 minutes. This would give us time to get off the bike, lock it up, unlock it and start another ride and allowed for a few extra minutes in case we couldn’t safely dismount for a few minutes.

We worked out our system really quickly and made it to the zoo… only to find out that we needed timed passes. We’re both usually really good planners, so it’s surprising that neither of us thought of it until we arrived, but then it was time to make alternate plans. What if we just cruised around for as long as we could? We’d make the most of our pass, see the sites, get some exercise and be outside in the beautiful weather.

We decided to head to the Wharf and eat outside at one of the many eateries there. We settled on Mi Vida and it was an excellent choice. Delicious Mexican in a beautiful setting. We locked up our Jump Bikes in the hopes they’d be there later so we didn’t have to hunt for more. Sadly, one was gone so we had to wander around looking at first for 1 then finding 2 together. We were ready for ice cream, so took our Jump Bikes off towards the Yards.

Between the Wharf and the Yards we hit one potential snag with the Jump Bikes. If yours isn’t working properly for any reason it’s a beast to pedal… especially if you don’t ride bikes… like, ever. So I valiantly pedaled a few miles under my own steam without any help from the Jump Bike. Mary did offer to switch with me but I was committed at that point and could use the exercise anyway.

At the Yards we enjoyed Jeni’s and Ice Cream Jubilee respectively – and I recovered from our journey. We didn’t get a picture of us enjoying our ice cream (probably because I was nearly dead), but it was in the shade, by the water and included ice cream, so how bad could it have been, right? We walked a little around the area and snapped this shot of us by the water.

At this point we were getting pooped, so we decided to get on our Jump Bikes and head back to the hotel until nightfall. We’d then head back out on Lime Scooters (since the pass worked for both), to see the monuments and memorials of Washington, DC.

This is where our tale gets a little hairy and highlights the potential flaw in our plan. On our way back to the hotel, we picked up bike after bike and one or the other wouldn’t work, wasting a fair bit of time, energy and patience doing this. We weren’t charged extra so that was helpful, but it took a little bit of the wind out of our sails for a bit.

Mary and I finally ended up getting two Lime Scooters to make the journey back from the Yards to our hotel near the White House. While it was nice not to walk those miles, it was still tricky to ride along through neighborhoods that clearly aren’t really for scootering tourists since they aren’t nearly as smooth as other areas of the city.

We took a few hours break, listened to the Hamilton soundtrack, relaxed and waited for dark when our next adventure was set to begin. We struggled to find two Lime scooters together since we hadn’t anticipated that a bunch of other people might also be doing what we were doing. Finally, we got on our way.

This portion of our journey was hijacked by something we hadn’t known to foresee. You should know that, at least with Lime scooters, there are no-lock zones around the famous memorials and monuments in Washington, DC. They’re marked by a red block on  your app and they don’t let you lock your scooter.

This is obviously done so that the area isn’t littered with defunct scooters, but boy was it a pain. You had to leave the zone to lock. We didn’t catch this on our first 30 minute ride and ended up over by ~3.5 minutes and had to pay $1.36 over our 24-hour pass price of $16.99. The area around the White House is also in a zone which is why we had some trouble with our scooters the night before.

In these zones there were also speed restrictions which were slower than walking at 3mph. We finally got out of a zone and realized another potential problem with our system. When we locked our scooters and tried to make a plan, someone reserved one of our scooters! So now we only had one. We decided to reserve two that didn’t seem that far away… spoiler alert: they were. We finally got to them only to have to plan our route carefully to be out of the zone near the Jefferson Memorial within 30 minutes. We did it though!

We then decided to start to make our way back to our hotel via the US Capitol building. We grabbed two different scooters that had better battery life and buzzed over. I thought there was a sidewalk further inside the Mall in the grassy area between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. Fun fact from The Traveling Teach: it’s the Washington Monument because it was started before George Washington died. Other constructions like the Jefferson Memorial and Lincoln Memorial were built after they died making them memorials.

Anyway, it turns out there wasn’t a sidewalk inside the Mall – it’s just gravel. Here’s what you can expect if you ride your scooter on the gravel.

We don’t recommend it. And if you think you’ll be a smarty pants like myself and ride on the thin strip of cement between the gravel and grass, you’ll most likely end up flying off your scooter into the grass and making your BFF equally concerned and hysterical.

After the Capitol we exited the zone and decided to switch back to Jump Bikes to take us to 7-Eleven for more late night snacks and then on to our hotel. Mary turned on some music and we jammed all the way.

So ended our 24-hour pass. We could’ve used it more in the morning, but it was our day to check out. That being said, let me recap the pros and cons of our 24-hour Lime Scooter and Jump Bike pass and give you my final verdict.

Pros:

1. Great value – It was worth all the hassles from a monetary perspective for sure. Totaling up our receipts, the same rides would’ve cost us $98.40 without the 24-hour unlimited pass – a difference of $81.41. Even with the few minutes over and the one minute extra reservation fee of $0.32 at one point, it was definitely more cost effective to use the pass.
2. Fun! – Riding the Jump Bikes was definitely more fun than the Lime Scooters in the end, but both modes of transportation are really fun.
3. Covered more ground than walking –  We covered just over 13 miles over the course of the day on our bikes and scooters. We’d have had to ride public transport, taxis or walk if we hadn’t chosen to bike and scooter about.
4. Easy to use app – It’s really easy to reserve bikes and scooters, pay, book the pass and check your receipts afterwards. You can even see how much the ride would’ve cost you but which the pass covered the cost of.

Cons:

1. Planning – The 30 minute limit requires some forethought and planning. Use an alarm and this is easily overcome.
2. Others reserving the scooters/bikes – Locked rides can be reserved by others. Make your plans before you lock, otherwise you might end up walking to find another ride.
3. Zone – The lock and speed restriction zone is a pain to navigate. It slows you down, makes you have to go in and out again and again.
4. Bike/scooter failures – Bikes and scooters sometimes don’t work properly and you have to hunt around for new rides. This was a big problem further out near the Yards.

The Verdict

So – it’s 4 pros and 4 cons. Tied.

What do I recommend? Do the pass.

It was well worth the occasional inconvenience to see so much of DC without needing to walk. It saved us $80 if we had just done the rides piecemeal throughout the day.

If you think you’ll take a ride more than 1.5 miles (like we did the night before for ~$12), it makes it worth it. Use our tips about setting the alarm, watching your zones and planning your route before you head out and you can’t go wrong.