This paper reports on the enhancement of the lobe plasma velocity towards the neutral sheet. Analyzing the Geotail plasma and magnetic field data in the lobes earthward of X=-45 RE, we identified 30 events of several-minute magnetic field increase-and-decrease during which the field tilts only southward; that is, the BZ variation is unipolar. For most of these events, we found that the lobe plasma velocity towards the neutral sheet is enhanced and peaked around the most southward tilting of the field. The average of the peak magnitude is about 130 km/s in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic field. For each case, this magnitude is roughly 1--10% of the lobe Alfven speed. We interpret the velocity enhancement having these characteristics as signatures of the transition from plasma sheet reconnection to lobe reconnection at the near-Earth neutral line. ¿ 1998 American Geophysical Union