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Bay Area Bike Share Battle Has Vast Ramifications

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/06/...ramifications/

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- The battle over bike share in the Bay Area between Uber and Lyft could have lasting implications for the future of public cycling and, indeed, capitalism itself. The two companies have circled each other warily like racers in a velodrome Uber with dockless Jump e-bikes and Lyft with its docked Ford GoBikes since 2018 when both publicly traded multi-billion-dollar companies acquired rentable bike start-ups.

But the transportation nemeses could be facing off this summer now that San Francisco wants to quadruple the number of bikes in its bike share program to 11,000 this year, dramatically expanding docked rental bikes, plus extending an existing pilot program for dockless bikes. — The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced last week it will allow companies, such as Uber, Lime, and Spin, to apply for new two-year permits to operate dockless electronic bikes by July. That follows an 18-month pilot program for electric, stationless bikes that the SFMTA, which oversees transit, streets and taxis in San Francisco, created in January 2018.

That could hinder Lyft, which believes it has an exclusive contract for its Ford GoBike program with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional transportation planning agency that finances roads, highways, and transit systems in the Bay Area. Lyft inherited the contract to provide a bike share system in the Bay Area’s nine counties when it purchased Motivate, the company that had made the agreement with the MTC in 2015. — Lyft President John Zimmer, who has a squadron of lawyers, wrote an aggressive letter on April 28 urging the SFMTA not to go forward awarding permits to competitors because the company already “invested millions of dollars to install bike station infrastructure” in anticipation of being the city’s sole bike share operator.

- Yet SFMTA officials claimed Lyft did not understand the contract, which was only for a “docked, station-based bike-share program” and the agency could award permits to stationless e-bikes. Instead, the city encouraged Lyft to develop a new 50-pound bike that includes both features — allowing it to be docked at stations around the city while containing an electric lock on the rear wheel activated by smartphone. That’s the new electric bike that will hit the streets of San Francisco in June (even as New York City and Washington, D.C. have to wait months for their e-bike fleets to be restored after a repair crisis).

- That interpretation surprised MTC leaders, who countered the “definition of bicycle is silent on any distinction between station-based and dockless bicycles.” MTC Executive Director Therese McMillan urged the SFMTA and Lyft to reach a resolution, noting the company would not “foot the entire cost of delivering, installing, and operating a 7,000-bike share system … if the participating cities were going to allow for point-to-point bike share competitors for a specified period.”

- If the SFMTA proceeds with issuing permits this summer, San Franciscans could have the option of choosing Jump or Ford GoBikes clustered in the same locations, putting the bike share foes in direct competition with each other in the same area. Cyclists hope that there’s room in Frisco for both Lyft and its e-bike rivals. — “San Francisco has proven that bike share is most successful when it is affordable, accessible, and equitable,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition spokeswoman Rachel Dearborn. “We support expanding bike share — regardless of what company or companies run it so that all people in San Francisco have more ways to get around.”

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