In the above video, filmed at Pepcom’s Digital Experience held in conjunction with CES2018, LimeBike’s VP of Marketing and Partnerships, Caen Contee made a prediction that LimeBike would grow by 300,000 bikes in the U.S. in just a quarter or two. Judging by this author’s February visit to Scottsdale, AZ and his use of LimeBike in San Jose, LimeBike seems well on the way to meeting its goal.
Contee indicates dockless, bike-share provides better value than other forms of transport for short distances and suggests a $5 to $7 per mile savings compared to ride-share. For short distances, it is often faster and more convenient to hop on a shared bike and ride directly to one’s destination, avoiding the costs and hassle of parking a car. Contee calls bikes pro-community in that they drive local commerce.
The so-called dockless, bike sharing approach is well established in China with hundreds of millions of bicycles deployed and is well on its way to providing an alternative last-mile transportation solutions in the U.S. That LimeBike has so many fast-growing competitors, which include Bird (electric scooters), CycleHop, Jump (just acquired by Uber), Mobike, Ofo, Spin and VBikes indicates that this market segment is real [For an excellent overview of the dockless, bikesharing segment and a proposal to create a BYOB – “Bring Your Own Battery solution – , check out this Medium article by Asher M].
Thanks to GPS and connectivity, LimeBike can tell where all its bikes and scooters are and can dispatch employees in LimeBike vans to move them as needed to meet demand. LimeBike also provides incentives for riders to move bikes, by providing coupons to use bikes that have been left in areas with lower demand.
Biking, particularly dockless, shared biking, faces a number of challenges, including:
- Lack of safe bike infrastructure – Contee views infrastructure as a chicken-egg problem and as an opportunity. For intance, LimeBike shares anonymous data with cities to help them show where demand is, so infrastructure can be improved.
- Like China, dockless sharing in the U.S. faces the issue of so-called #bikelitter (Instagram examples), where people leave bikes in places they shouldn’t. Contee points out that LimeBike is seeing less than a 1% theft or vandalism rate (he didn’t indicate over what time period). He says that the bikes have alarms and sensors that will alert the LimeBike team if there is an issue. He also talks about LimeBike’s pro-active efforts in working with the community and cities to prevent issues.
The dockless, bikesharing industry is taking the challenges seriously, as evidenced by a couple of initiatives centered around the idea of creating people-centric cities. Bird has called on its competitors to join it in a “Save our Sidewalks” campaign to ensure bikes aren’t strewn about, as well as provide a mechanism to help cities improve bike infrastructure. Meanwhile, LimeBike, along with other bikeshare and players in the mobility space, have signed on to the Robin Chase-led, Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities that aims to put people first as new transportation technology is introduced.
That these principles were signed by such a wide swath of industry together with as well Jump’s acquisition by Uber indicate that the dockless, bikesharing may end up being a feature in a continuum of mobility options; one where a single app might open up a world of possibilities from bikeshare to rideshare to carshare.
One reply on “Shared Bikes & More Without Fixed Infrastructure”
And a strong argument for New York City to allow electric bikes to use bike lanes. Makes the argument that e-bikes are an important equalizer to lower the cost of mobility.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/e-bikes-power-n-y-s-transit-future-article-1.3904216