Will EBikeshare Replace EBike Ownership For Most People in Cities?

[Dewey]

Lyft returns CitiBike ebikeshare fleet to NYC with fixes to address the faults that caused them to be withdrawn last year including a new battery supplier, new front Sturmey Archer drum brake, with the hub motor is moved to the rear so CitiBike state it is a single-speed (also reported on Reddit) hopefully it's not geared too high or it might burn out the motors climbing hills. Previously Lyft simply modified the Bay Wheels/San Francisco ebikes by adding a disk brake to replace the front roller brake. It's unclear which model ebike DC's Capital Bikeshare fleet will be getting in due course, but I hope it's not the NYC design as I liked the Enviolo CVP gearing on the original CaBi+ ebikes.


Pricing: Annual Members pay an extra $0.10/minute, capped at $2 for rides 45 minutes or less starting or ending outside Manhattan. Non-Members pay $0.15/minute. Reduced Fare Bike Share Members pay $0.05/minute, capped at $2 for rides 45 minutes or less starting or ending outside Manhattan.

 

[Dewey]

Lyft raising prices for Bay Wheels ebikeshare rides in San Fransisco $2 to unlock and 20c per minute to ride. Uber are withdrawing Jump from SF. https://www.sfchronicle.com/busines...s-triggering-an-15084541.php#article-comments. Comments I’ve read are Lyft’s pricing explanation rebalancing argument is spurious now that the Bay Wheels ebikes can be locked dockless and the new batteries can be replaced without needing to move the bike for charging.

 

[Dewey]

The effects of the COVID economic shutdown on e-bikeshare in cities is discussed in a recent Washington Post article that reports Uber sold JUMP ebikeshare to Lime Bike in early May, and that JUMP has withdrawn from San Francisco. Lime is only currently operating in 20 of its 120 global cities where it was operating before the pandemic. A chaotic transition ensued as Uber pulled the JUMP app preventing rentals before Lime had added the JUMP bikes to their App.

 

[Dewey]

Appalling news, Uber have decided to scrap 20,000 JUMP electric Bikeshare fleet bikes in the US

20,000 JUMP bikes are dying. - The Bike Share Museum

Our inbox exploded with stories from JUMP shift leads and head mechanics.

bikesharemuseum.com

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1265444495488880649

 

[Dewey]

DC Journalist Gordon Chaffin investigates the Uber JUMP debacle

Video Shows Uber Trashing JUMP E-bikes, Says They Were Unsafe for Consumer Re-Use

5/27/2020

streetjustice.substack.com

 

[Asher]

NB: when I first wrote this thread, Jump prices were very cheap, $2/30 minutes. I assumed they were profitable at that rate, or could become so. That was not true. As they hiked prices, and sharing systems failed to pencil financially (long before today), it became clear sharing is a sideshow, and ownership, and occasionally leasing, is the future.

 

[Dewey]

Helbiz lose their bike supplier as Mahindra closes the Genze US operation https://electrek.co/2020/06/14/genze-closes-electric-scooter-bicycle-made-in-america/

 

[Dewey]

Article about Uber’s mismanagement of JUMP https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...n-jump-bikeshare-destroyed-thousands-of-bikes

 

[Dewey]

Genze might have closed shop but the bikes are still going, in DC Spin are now offering them for rent for $39 per week, the 345wh battery seems a bit small for the delivery riders they’re aiming to attract https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/bik/d/washington-rent-spin-electric-bike-and/7147814542.html

E-bike Rent — Spin

www.spin.app

 

[Dewey]

Finally! Lyft/Motivate return ebikes to DC’s regional Capital Bikeshare fleet starting tomorrow Wednesday 7/8/20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/07/07/capital-bikeshare-e-bikes-return-region-promotes-cycling-amid-pandemic/

Reportedly Lyft will increase the number of Ebikes until by August there should be 900 out of the 4,500 fleet https://streetjustice.substack.com/p/capital-bikeshare-e-bikes-return

 

[Dallant]

This might work in big cities or touristy areas but just won’t work in rural areas. If I were a tourist I’d much rather drive an escooter.

 

[Dewey]

Google have partnered with Lyft to update Google Maps with a new feature to enable end-to-end riding directions between docks for Bikeshare riders in certain cities including:
Chicago, U.S. (Divvy)
New York City, U.S. (Citi Bike)
San Francisco Bay Area, U.S. (Bay Wheels)
Washington, DC, U.S. (Capital Bikeshare)

While Google have partnered with Lime to include it's new JUMP ebikes that are dockless it's unclear from Google's press release how/if this will work with undocked ebikes run by these systems (presumably it can or that would just be silly).

 

[Dewey]

The curious case of Miami-Dade. At the end of 2019 the southern Florida County launched e-bikeshare partnering with a Spanish operator Ride On providing a docked system using a Class 1 pedelec with a front hub motor and a 3-speed IGH. In March 2020 in response to the Coronavirus shutdown the Miami-Dade County Mayor ordered all shared ebike and scooter operators cease, closed all bike shops, and even went as far as to disable public bicycle parking racks. What is surprising is the bans remained in place for months after the CDC advised outdoor areas like bikeshare docks and bicycle parking stands require normal cleaning but do not require disinfecting, but that exposure to sunlight reduces the time the virus survives on surfaces and objects, and while high-touch surfaces such as handlebars and saddles do require disinfecting bikeshare operators around the country have built this into their normal operations, yet Miami-Dade remained the only County in the US to maintain suspension of micro-mobility services. A non-profit organization Transit Alliance Miami campaigned to lift the suspensions which was eventually successful as the ban was lifted in mid-September after the Mayor required operators to make hand sanitizer available either on the bikes or at the docking stations, however the Ride On Miami Twitter feed does not indicate that operations have resumed.

 

[Dewey]

Lime Bike announce a $50 million investment in ebikeshare, showing a new design and plans to increase the number of cities in which they operate.

 

[Dewey]

Interesting article about ebikeshare in the time of COVID

Source: Glusac, Elaine. (2021, March 2). Farther, Faster and No Sweat: Bike-Sharing and the E-Bike Boom. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/travel/ebikes-bike-sharing-us.html?smid=url-share

 

[Asher]

Interesting article about ebikeshare in the time of COVID

Source: Glusac, Elaine. (2021, March 2). Farther, Faster and No Sweat: Bike-Sharing and the E-Bike Boom. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/travel/ebikes-bike-sharing-us.html?smid=url-share

Bikeshare has always attracted ~100 times more press interest per mile ridden than personally owned bikes. For whatever reason, media types love to squawk about bike share when it's not actually that good in the US, by its own standards (biggest problems: low station density and/or low coverage). I think these are people who like public transit because it's a service, and wanted to graft that onto biking, as if having your own personal bike was not an option (an option which is far more efficient, in speed and cost).

I took the initial Uber/Jump prices at face value as financially sustainable, and I was wildly wrong, because they were losing bigly on those old prices of $2 a ride. By any measure, bike share does not stand a chance against personal possession.

I hope as ebike purchasing subsidies take off, people will stop trying to make bikeshare something out to be more than the marginal solution it is. There are many good ways for the US governments to help, but expanding bikeshare isn't really one of them - and US bikeshare is in decline anyway nationally.

 

[Dewey]

US bikeshare is in decline anyway nationally.

Perhaps, but that assessment doesn’t jibe with the pandemic ridership boom reported in the New York Times article where in NYC “ridership exceeded 2019 levels in the last four months of 2020” and Chicago reports plans to expand the Divvy fleet to 10,000 bikes by next year, that’s more than twice the DC fleet size, and about half the NYC fleet size, with ebikes reportedly making up an average 28% of fleet share.

The other link I posted on Monday reported Lime wish to expand ebikeshare to 10 US cities by the end of this year.

I don’t mean to argue or be contrary with you, just wondering if ebikeshare will be part of the urban infrastructure for the foreseeable future.

 

[Asher]

Perhaps, but that assessment doesn’t jibe with the pandemic ridership boom reported in the New York Times article where in NYC “ridership exceeded 2019 levels in the last four months of 2020” and Chicago reports plans to expand the Divvy fleet to 10,000 bikes by next year, that’s more than twice the DC fleet size, and about half the NYC fleet size, with ebikes reportedly making up an average 28% of fleet share.

The other link I posted on Monday reported Lime wish to expand ebikeshare to 10 US cities by the end of this year.

I don’t mean to argue or be contrary with you, just wondering if ebikeshare will be part of the urban infrastructure for the foreseeable future.

That's the last four months... At a time when there's been a personal bike boom not seen in fifty years, perhaps more, bikeshare didn't gain much ground. Granted, the (false) notion that virus spreads thru surface contact didn't help, but it's still remarkable in a bad way that bikeshare failed to see much boost. I recall hearing that systems outside of NYs fared much worse. DC saw bike shops emptied but the bikeshare lingered in disuse.

Trip counts are also sensitive to the number of bikes and stations in the system. I once looked at montreal's and it was clear that bike counts increased faster than trips did... Presumably because it means they served the neighborhoods most appealing for bikeshare first (eg lots of people coming and going all day, with good bike infra).

As for Chicago, Lyft promised the city oodles of investment, at a time when they were far more optimistic about shared micromobility as a central plank of their service (their prime rival for winning the contract then: the now defunct JUMP). The out one would be very different now.

I'm not anti-bikeshare, I just think it's a tool that planners have chosen too much when there were better solutions available, but bikeshare was there for mimicking. Better solutions like secure bike parking, bike lending libraries, purchasing subsidies. (I'd say bike infrastructure but that's more a matter of insufficient political power than a lack of money.) Conversely, the Dutch have massive bike garages and parking lots in costly city centers, full of slow heavy generic bikes designed for outdoor storage that take mostly short trips... They're nearly bikeshare bikes, but everyone has their own. They'd be better off replacing much of those bikes with bikeshare, but there is a strong culture of owning your own vehicle.

Graph from: https://observablehq.com/@benoldenburg/nyc-citi-bike-trips-change-2019-2020

 

[legsofbeer]

A couple years ago I did a back of the envelope analysis of the point to point rental scooter business in SF and came out with annual revenue numbers that would be adequate for a single 7/11 store. For point to point bike rental I think it's a bit worse, because the capital and maintenance costs for rolling stock are a bit higher. There's just no real business there. (note that I said "point to point rental"). I think there is a real business oppo for small rent-by-the day operations oriented to tourists, but that is something different.

So why all the noise and expansion around bike and scooter point to point rentals? They're either running on a subsidy (eg. the carbon penalty offsets car manufacturers pay), or they're in the business of selling stock to suckers. Or both. The only consumer advantages I can see to ad hoc renting vs. private ownership are if you have limited storage, are worried about theft, don't want to do maintenance, or your usage rate is less than two trips a month. Right now the services are priced at a loss; the incentives to own grow even stronger if they price to sustain the business or even to (gasp) turn a profit.

I could maybe see point to point bike&scooter rental operating successfully as a co-op, but there's no big windfall exit strategy there. But perhaps thats the reason uber and lyft refused to sell their fleets when they retired obsolete models and junked them instead. Don't give the co-ops any help getting started.

 

[Dewey]

Investment certainly seems to be the stumbling block as this Streetsblog article discussing the Bikeshare Transit Act of 2021 describes “87 percent of all shared-cycling trips take place in just six metro areas: San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, New York, and Washington, D.C., all of which have made significant local investments into docked systems”.

Perhaps making bikeshare eligible for federal transit funding treating them like buses would provide more stability and encourage more corporate sponsorship.