A swappable battery and no more clunky U-lock or keypad? These are just some of the changes coming in January on the red Jump electric-assist bicycles rentable through the Uber app.
The next generation of the shared bikes was announced Tuesday, almos…
Category: bike sharing
Like Lyft, Uber CEO wants more riders on scooters, bikes
Uber is a ride-hailing app, but lately it’s become an app for riding an electric bike or scooter, renting a car, and even checking when the bus is coming.
In an interview released over the weekend in the Financial Times, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi em…
Lyft wants you to ditch your car for its promotional experiment
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F820241%2F24827ac4-3aac-4a55-a498-267e191b2403.png)
For car owners, spending 31 days without using your car is quite a challenge. But Lyft wants to prove otherwise with its latest promo, #DitchWithLyft.
Lyft thinks you can live without driving your own vehicle if you car share, take public transit, ride bike-shares, and of course, use Lyft. So it’s offering the first 100 people who sign up and promise to stash away their car for the month of August $550 in transit credits.
That breaks down to:
-
$300 in Lyft shared ride credit
-
$45 in Divvy Bike credit
-
$100 in Zipcar credit
-
$105 in ‘L’ and bus monthly pass
Lyft’s own roots were as a carpool platform, Zimride, which partners with Zipcar, and it recently acquired bike-share platform Motivate, which runs the Divvy bike program in Chicago. So these aren’t unexpected partnerships for this promotional event. Read more…
More about Cars, Lyft, Public Transportation, Bike Sharing, and Tech
NYC gets its first e-bikes, with Jump bikes in the Bronx and Staten Island
Back in April, New York relinquished its unreasonable ban on electric-assist bicycles within the city. And now the first bike-share fleets featuring e-bikes have arrived.
Jump Bikes, which ironically started in New York City, finally arrived in the B…
Ofo shut down in many U.S. cities. Here’s what happens with all those bicycles.
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F818063%2F79338ed3-2772-4bf7-8d82-7f8becf24c1c.jpg)
The bright yellow Ofo bicycles came into our country fast and furious last August, but after barely a year in the United States, the app-enabled bike share company announced it was downsizing its presence in more than 30 U.S. cities down to a handful.
But its 40,000 bicycles won’t go to waste. Already about 3,000 of its traditional pedal bikes will be donated to organizations in 10 different cities, and more cities will donate bicycles in the coming weeks.
“We want to make sure the bikes stay in the community and go to people who can use them,” Ofo spokesperson Tom Sarris said. “They’re not going to the scrap pile.” Read more…
More about Bird, Lime, Ofo, Bike Sharing, and Tech
After a year, Lime boasts 6 million scooter and bike rides
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F814984%2F3bad7682-73c5-4c78-89d8-43ba4ad53d76.jpg)
Love it or hate it, it’s been a year since bike-shares flooded the United States.
Other countries, such as China and Australia, were already inundated with the services, which let users unlock bicycles with a smartphone and leave them anywhere when they’re done. (They’re called “dockless” since they don’t have to be locked to a dock.) But the U.S. didn’t see them until this year.
Lime, which used to be called LimeBike, is celebrating one year in business. It offers bikes, motorized scooters, and electric-assist bicycles in 70 cities. So far, people have taken more than 6 million rides on its vehicles in the U.S. and Europe. Read more…
More about Lime, Bike Sharing, Scooter, Tech, and Transportation
View More After a year, Lime boasts 6 million scooter and bike ridesOfo shuts down many international markets to focus on profitability
Chinese bike-sharing company Ofo is entering a new phase. After a period of aggressive growth, the company is looking back at its international markets and focusing on the most promising ones. A couple of weeks ago, the company issued a press release highlighting some of the priorities outside of China. As part of this move, […]
View More Ofo shuts down many international markets to focus on profitabilityLyft pulls an Uber and acquires Motivate, a bike-sharing company
Lyft says its new bike-share program will revolutionize urban transportation. The only problem? Uber kind of beat them to that particular revolution.
In a Monday blog post, Lyft announced it had reached an agreement to acquire Motivate, a bike-sharin…
Behind the scenes with the vans and, yes, tricycles that make bike-shares ride smoothly
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F802526%2F75f5e078-3bc6-42a7-ae7b-de354075192f.jpg)
It’s all about the fleet behind the fleet.
Bike-share programs have swept into cities across the globe. They let people open an app and ride away on a bike, paying as they go. The problem? Those bikes require a lot of TLC.
So behind the scenes, companies send teams in trucks, vans, and even tricycles to repair, maintain, and “rebalance” bikes, an industry term for making sure bicycles aren’t all clumped together or placed too far away from potential riders. That’s where software tracking each bike’s location and user behavior comes in.
More about Jump, Lime, Ofo, Bike Sharing, and Tech
View More Behind the scenes with the vans and, yes, tricycles that make bike-shares ride smoothlyoBike is closing its dock-less bike-sharing service in Singapore
Singapore’s upcoming licensing for dock-less bike-sharing services has claimed its first scalp after oBike — a Singapore-based company run by Chinese founders — announced that it would cease its service in the country ahead of the implementation of regulations. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is introducing measures to protect Singapore’s streets from a glut of […]
View More oBike is closing its dock-less bike-sharing service in SingaporeUber is bringing its Jump e-bikes to Europe
Dockless bike sharing startups — such as Ofo, Mobike and LimeBike — have flooded European cities with rides that can be hired at the tap of an app in recent years. But fierce competition in the urban mobility space is not deterring Uber from peddling into the region, and attempting to put some shine back on […]
View More Uber is bringing its Jump e-bikes to EuropeHow bike-share companies protect their fleet against vandalism, abuse
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F784462%2Fb8b3a5b4-0e80-4a7e-8769-9483847fd56e.jpg)
It can be tough out there as a bicycle in a bike-share fleet, endlessly unlocked via an app, pedaled around and then left behind before the whole process repeats itself.
The companies behind the growing trend of bike-sharing optimize the vehicles for high frequency use — but on top of that, the bikes need even more protection from vandals.
The shared bikes get used a lot more than your average bicycle, so durability is an issue on top of any tampering. Bike-share company Ofo has logged more than 32 million rides globally. Jump bikes, the red e-bike-share Uber recently acquired, have about six trips every day per bicycle in San Francisco. The average bike trip is just over a half mile. Read more…
More about Design, Bicycles, Lime, Ofo, and Bike Sharing
View More How bike-share companies protect their fleet against vandalism, abuse