Lyft Now Largest Bikeshare Service
Here at Beyond we are comprised of several avid bikers and have been working on an internal bike project to contribute to our own bike-friendly metropolis. The Chicago ridesharing system, Divvy swept through the city in the summer of 2013 and now there are over 6,000 blue bikes at Chicagoans fingertips and nearly 600 stations making Divvy access user-friendly and plentiful.
Divvy, like other bike share systems, consists of a fleet of specially designed, sturdy and durable bikes that are locked into a network of docking stations throughout the region. The bikes can be unlocked from one station and returned to any other station in the system. People use bike share to explore Chicago, commute to work or school, run errands, get to appointments or social engagements, and more.
What Divvy is to Chicago, Citi Bike is to New York, GoBike is to San Francisco, and so on. The company behind these big city bike share systems is Motivate. Headquartered in New York City, Motivate has quickly grown and created the bike share movement. In 2017, 80% of all U.S. bikeshare treks were completed on a Motivate bike. At the end of November, Lyft announced that they had completed the acquisition of Motivate and as the first act of business would triple Citi Bikes by adding 40,000 bikes.
“Bikeshare is a natural extension of Lyft’s vision to improve transportation access, sustainability and affordability. The growth potential for bikeshare to transform the landscape of our cities is massive. The benefits of bikeshare are evident: It’s healthier. It can be faster. And it’s better for our planet. Yet we’ve only started to scratch the surface of what’s possible in shifting as a society from car trips to bike trips. With this acquisition, we are poised to help take bikeshare to the next level: adding thousands of bikes and stations in communities that haven’t had access to transportation; making bikeshare membership more convenient and affordable than ever; and deploying new electric bikes, on a major scale.”
Lyft’s goal, like their rideshare program, is to provide affordable options for transportation that promotes sustainability, safety, and “transit integration.” Overall though, Lyft would like to see this recent acquisition take one million cars off the road by 2020.
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