Collision Course: The Fight for Denver’s E-Scooter Contract Is Getting Ugly

Rentable electric scooters were ridden nearly 6.8 million miles throughout Denver in 2025. That’s the equivalent of scooting around the entire circumference of the Earth — more than 270 times.

The city’s shared micromobility program has grown into one of the largest in the nation since e-scooters arrived on Denver’s streets in 2018. Today, only two scooter companies are permitted to rent out the popular (and lucrative) vehicles in Denver: Lime and Bird. But that may soon change.

In December, the Denver Department of Transportation & Infrastructure selected a new company, Veo, to take over the city’s scooter operations in 2026. While the current companies have seen great success in expanding ridership and running a world-leading equity program, they’ve also failed to address the unintended side effects. Despite pleas from residents and city leadership, their scooters continue to block sidewalks, facilitate illegal riding, and lead to increasingly frequent deaths and injuries.

With Veo, the city is seeking a new approach to scooter travel while building on the strong foundation laid by the predecessors. But Lime and Bird are not leaving the Mile High City without a fight.

The three companies are in the midst of an all-out turf war to determine who will maintain control of the Denver market. For nearly four months, supporters of each company have flooded Westword’s inbox with opinion pieces, packed Denver City Council committee rooms, and helped postpone the council’s vote on Veo’s contract agreement…twice.

The bitter battle will finally come to an end this month.

Veo’s contract to operate in Denver is supposed to begin on May 1, while Lime and Bird’s contracts expire on May 16. City Council’s Transportation & Infrastructure Committee will consider Veo’s contract for the third time on April 15, after delaying the vote on March 18 and again on April 1.

That’s because of Lime Access, an equity program that lets low-income residents ride scooters for free if they receive city, state or federal subsidies like SNAP and Medicaid. The free transportation has been life-changing for some, allowing them to get to work, school and appointments without cost, while avoiding public transit limitations, car traffic, and the maintenance requirements and fear of theft that come with owning personal scooters and bikes.

“It has helped me get to the births of two of my granddaughters. It has helped me keep a job that I was working after the hours that public transportation, like RTD, is running,” Arenthian Bohannan, a Lime Access rider, testified during the March 18 committee hearing.

Veo has agreed to continue providing free rides with its own access program. But Lime has argued that the smaller micromobility company is incapable of taking over. Though Veo operates in more than fifty cities, the Denver fleet would be its largest to date. Its biggest market is currently in Washington, D.C., where it has approximately 4,000 vehicles, compared to the 9,000 Denver desires.

Denver’s access program is Lime’s largest in the world, according to the company, with around 30,000 people signed up.

“Transitioning this program in May — in the highest ridership season of the year — while Veo is engaging with a program here in Denver that is at least twice as large as any program they’ve ever run before, they’re going to have their hands full no matter what,” says Zach Williams, Lime’s regional head of government relations. “We just want to make sure that there is sufficient time between the transition to allow for as many people as humanly possible to get moved over.”

Lime is seeking a contract extension of twelve to eighteen months to serve as a transitional period, Williams says.

Despite Lime’s concerns that access riders will fall through the cracks, DOTI says the company has refused to assist in transitioning Lime Access users to Veo’s new access program until the contract is finalized.

“We have specifically asked that the current operators communicate information about the access program transition to their access program users. …Unfortunately, they have chosen not to,” Alaina McWhorter, DOTI’s legislative liaison, said at the April 1 committee meeting. “DOTI, Veo and the city can ramp up and expand our outreach and enrollment activities very quickly when this contract gets signed. We have the contingencies and mechanisms in place. …We are not going to rely on our current vendor to do it out of the goodness of their heart.”

Veo defends its ability to handle the transition. The current access program averages 7,000 to 8,000 active monthly users, according to the city; over 1,200 users have already pre-enrolled for Veo’s access program. Residents can use their participation in the current Lime Access program as proof of eligibility to enroll, and Veo will allow a grace period for users to ride for free throughout May without providing proof of eligibility.

“They’re grasping at straws,” Alexander Keating, Veo’s vice president of policy and partnerships, says of Lime and Bird. “Both of those vendors have a track record of, if they feel they can intimidate a city with a lawsuit or a challenge, they will. …Having lost the procurement, they have a lot on the line. They’re going to do what they need to do to try to protect themselves. I’m not super surprised, but I think it’s unfortunate.”

Veo’s proposed access program offers more flexibility for riders, but fewer overall minutes. Currently, Lime Access provides three free rides per day, each lasting up to thirty minutes. That means users can’t make two round-trips without paying, even if each trip is only a few minutes long. Veo will offer sixty minutes of free rides per day, with no limit on the number of rides taken; after the sixty minutes, riders will be charged $0.15 per minute, with no unlocking fee.

Lime Access used to provide unlimited free rides in Denver, but the company scaled back the program to just three rides per day in April 2025.

Much of the debate over the scooter providers has centered on the access program and panicked riders who fear losing an essential means of transportation. That fear has infiltrated Denver City Council, as well.

“I’ve been wrestling really hard with the equity program,” Councilmember Sarah Parady said during the April 1 meeting. “I’m just really, really worried that people are not going to find their way back into the program for a whole variety of reasons. I think Veo has done what can be done on their end; it’s just because of not having an overlap.”

Denver prohibits riding scooters on sidewalks, riding with multiple passengers and parking scooters in ways that block sidewalks or streets, but all of those behaviors can be observed daily in the city. Despite this, Denver police issued only nine citations for improper scooter use between 2018 and 2024, compared with the over 18.3 million e-scooter trips taken in that time frame. That has led officials to look to the companies to enforce proper behavior among their riders.

“There’s little or no policing of careless and dangerous scooter rider behavior and improper scooter parking,” said David Kurth of the Upper Downtown Neighborhood Association during the March 18 committee. Kurth expressed frustration over “the lip service that the current providers — especially Lime — have given to the safety of pedestrians in the downtown area.”

Reckless behavior by riders has dire consequences.

Fifteen people have died while riding scooters in Denver since 2018, with over half of those deaths occurring just last year. Denver Health registered 1,868 patient encounters attributed to scooter injuries in 2025 — more than five patient encounters each day of the year. And Denver police received 199 reports of scooter-vehicle crashes in 2025.

City council pushed to improve the safety and organization of scooters last May, passing an ordinance requiring mandatory scooter parking zones in certain neighborhoods, technology that detects when users ride on sidewalks, and compliance tests that riders must pass before being able to rent the vehicles. The ordinance takes effect on July 1.

Veo was partially chosen because of its ability to comply with these new regulations, according to DOTI. Denver officials have said their primary considerations during the scooter vendor procurement process included the companies’ safety features, equity programs, pricing and systems for parking and tidiness.

Veo scooters are fitted with technology to detect unlawful behavior, such as riding on sidewalks or riding with multiple people on board, and the vehicle emits a voice warning if a rider does something wrong. Each vehicle has a QR code that reads “How’s my parking?”, which passersby can use to report improperly parked vehicles. Veo also offers a variety of vehicles with seats and larger wheels than those on standard standing scooters, improving stability for riders.

The third scooter provider in the mix, Bird, questions why it was not selected, accusing DOTI of being non-transparent with how it scored operators.

“We see some of the things that we put, in terms of benefits, into our proposal as more competitive compared to the operator that was chosen,” says Jimmy Gilman, Bird’s director of partnerships and policy. “We’re a bit confused and, really, just curious about how the scoring happened. We really think that should be a priority for all folks to make sure that the public benefit is maximized.”

Veo’s proposal will charge users less to ride than Bird and Lime currently charge, and provide a wide range of micromobility devices that the other companies do not offer, including dual-passenger and cargo-carrying options. Bird claims that its proposal submitted to the city offered lower prices, in addition to more job creation, equity access, helmet distribution and parking corral installation.

“This decision was not made lightly,” DOTI’s McWhorter told the council committee. “Veo demonstrated the strongest responses and proposals to continue building out a safe, affordable, equitable and accessible shared bike and scooter program. They really showed up for Denver in this process.”

Some city councilmembers have celebrated DOTI’s decision to go with a new scooter provider. During the April 1 meeting, Councilmember Paul Kashmann said that he would not support a contract that included either Lime or Bird.

“If it had been the previous vendors, I’d be a hard ‘no’ on this from the beginning. They have done nothing in my district other than leave vehicles blocking the sidewalks and in the streets,” Kashmann said. “This is the responsibility of the industry. They can’t keep raking in dollars nationwide and put out lousy vehicles and make little to no real effort to keep their vehicles where it’s safe for them to be ridden.”

The Transportation & Infrastructure Committee again delayed consideration of Veo’s proposed contract agreement on April 1, two weeks after the last postponement. While some councilmembers picked sides in the scooter skirmish, most blamed the stall on DOTI, adding intragovernmental friction to the already strained proceedings.

During the March 18 meeting, DOTI failed to provide councilmembers with the final contract proposal that they were being asked to vote on. The contract was ready on April 1, but DOTI had made a last-minute change the evening before, again frustrating councilmembers. The amendment removed a provision that would have let Veo charge access riders a monthly fee under certain conditions, following backlash after 9News reported on the potential fee. (Veo called the provision a safeguard, claiming it did not intend to ever charge access riders.)

“I’m not going to trust that you just told me that you cut out a provision,” Council President Amanda Sandoval said on April 1. “I’m supposed to have the capacity to have read that last night? You sent it to me at 5:54 at night and I have a committee meeting this morning.”

Councilmember Chris Hinds, a leading proponent for scooter reforms, said the repeated postponement of the contract is not “necessarily because people have concerns about Veo or whether [the contract is] ready for the floor. I think that we want to make sure that our work is checked and that we can trust but verify.”

Councilmember Kevin Flynn offered a motion to advance Veo’s contract to the full council, but no other member seconded the motion, so the committee could not even hold a vote. The committee instead unanimously voted to postpone consideration of the contract to April 15.

The extra time has enabled all of the scooter companies to amplify their campaigns.

“I would hate for what is a uniquely special program in this ecosystem to be lost,” Williams with Lime says of the Lime Access program. “We are wholly and deeply committed to making sure that access riders are cared for and we are ready and willing to work. …We’re just hopeful that the pressure stays on.”

During the March 18 meeting, the conference room audience was packed with attendees in neon green T-shirts, signaling their support for Lime. For the next meeting on April 1, Veo apparently arrived early, filling the room with dozens of people in black Veo T-shirts, while those sporting Lime and Bird merch were relegated to an overflow room upstairs. Organizers with Lime paced the crowd of around sixty people, handing out free shirts and handwritten signs to anyone who wanted them.

“Frankly, ever since Bird and Lime began dropping scooters on city streets without permits in 2018, scooters and bikes have been a focal point for drama in cities,” Veo’s Keating says. “It’s a sad reality for the industry that that’s a common outcome here, that these become lightning rod issues. …I’m very confident that this will get worked through and that it’s an open and transparent process.”

The overflow room of Lime and Bird supporters exploded with applause at the result of the council’s second postponement.

“We’re at least safe for two more weeks,” one man shouted as he walked out of the room.