Lime bikes park in a spot specially created in 2018 for the bike-share program in South Bend. MICHAEL CATERINA/ SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE FILE
SOUTH BEND — For three months in 2019, a handful of staff from the bike share company Lime hunkered down in a nondescript brick building at 251 E. Sample St.
Normally, they repaired Lime’s signature green bikes here, assembled new ones and dispatched them to the South Bend area. It was their passion.
This time, they wielded saws. Noisily, and sometimes with tiny metal slivers, the reciprocating saws buzzed through hundreds of the diagonal frames. Before the metal could be sent to scrap, a battery had to be extracted from its hiding place inside of each frame.
It marked the end of bikes for the California-based Lime, which quickly pivoted its attention to scooters instead. By then, hundreds of the bikes had vanished from streets, sidewalks and lots. The company arranged for the pickup of batteries for electronic disposal, plus the scrap recycling of the metal.
There were about 1,300 bikes that the local Lime crew had to dispose of, per orders from Lime, said Skyler Mudd, who worked as the local operations manager until just one month before Lime ended its time in South Bend.
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