Category: Bike Share

Uber has offloaded its JUMP ebikeshare and (outside the UK) escootershare operation, to Lime, and invested a sum of money in Lime. The move has resulted in a large number of job losses at JUMP, as Uber looks to shore up its finances and focus on those currently profitable. It is the end for JUMP which arose from Social Bicycles (whose largest operation was the GRID bikeshare in Phoenix, USA) as their ebikeshare brand, before being bought by Uber.

JUMP had suspended its operations globally except for in Milan and London, perhaps an indication of the two cities where it remained popular. Certainly, the system was (and still is) well used in London, with each bike normally being used for multiple journeys a day – always a healthy sign for a bikeshare system. JUMP’s London fleet is currently 600 bikes – around a third of its 2020 maximum. Following the Lime offloading, the bikes most disappeared from London streets for a couple of days and nights – possibly while the local operating team was digesting the news – but are now back and continuing to be used well.

I understand that Lime, who withdrew their bikes at the beginning of lockdown, will be likely not putting their own fleet of bikes back out on the streets of London, instead using (and presumably rebranding) the JUMP fleet they now own, due to the better hardware and performance of the latter bike. Lime had mainly moved to escootershare anyway, except in London.

It will be interesting to see how London’s bikeshare map looks following the merger of the two biggest electric fleets and the resumption of normal service post-lockdown. Lime operated in more areas of London than JUMP, and also tended to operate in areas without formal agreements with the borough councils – they also have not published an availability fleet, the only UK operator to not do so. They also frequently expanded and shrunk their operating area. JUMP on the other hand has taken a more formal approach. The two had some overlap but also operated in different boroughs – it is not clear whether the permitting in Hackney, for instance, will transfer to Lime. Hackney operates a hub-only permit model, with two seats, currently awarded to JUMP and Beryl.

The recent launch of the UK Shared Micromobility Dashboard has allowed for a closer look at the live situation of bikeshare systems in the UK and how usage and availability has changed in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. To help with this I have added a column comparing the % of bicycles in the fleet compared with the 2020 maximum.

It is also interesting to contrast how different cities’ bikeshare systems have reacted world-wide, with varying national lockdown policies and different user types have resulted in, in some cases, big increases in usages and, elsewhere, a collapse of usage leading in some cases, unviability.

Bikeshare in Lockdown London

London has 11000 bicycles available for automated hire – down a bit from a maximum of 16000 but still a considerable resource.

In summary: 3 of the 10 systems are operating with normal numbers, 3 have closed completely, and 4 have slashed their fleet to under half their size earlier in the year.

The Santander Cycles docked system is just as large as ever – indeed it normally sees a drop in fleet size as summer approaches, down from ~9500 to ~8500 due to maintenance backlogs and/or optimising fleet distribution, but has instead increased to over 10000 – just short of its record. It has also been seeing very high usage numbers – the good weather is helping, but maybe here it is seen as a safer form of transport for a city where most households in the inner city don’t own a car, bike ownership remains relatively low, and bus, metro and train use is being heavily discouraged.

On the other hand, the two systems in London which have steadfastly failed to release live open data feeds about their fleet locations and availability, namely Lime and Bird (London’s only escootershare) quickly shut down near the start of the lockdown. Both businesses have been struggling in general and have shut down in almost all regions globally.

Jump, on the other hand, has remained operating in London – it has shut down in almost every other city it operates in. The London fleet has reduced however to just 20% of its 2020 maximum. The remaining few bikes are consequently being very heavily used. Mobike, similarly, is still operating but down to just 11% of its numbers earlier in the year.

London’s smaller fleets have also reduced in size – Freebike down to 40% of its fleet and operating in a reduced area, and Beryl’s already small fleet down to 26% – Beryl has however launched much larger systems recently in Watford and Norwich, so may be using some of these bikes there.

Finally, the nextbike system in Brunel University and Uxbridge is still running, in contrast to the tiny Kingston University system that has shutdown (which is fair enough, the university itself being almost shut down and university students being the target user). Barnet council’s private system is also still going.

How Bikeshare is Adapting in the rest of the UK

Beryl’s 4 systems in Watford, Norwich, Hereford and Bournemouth are all operating normally. SoBi in Brighton is also seeing normal fleet numbers. Nextbike is more mixed – Cardiff, Stirling, Warwick University and Surrey University are normal, but Belfast, Milton Keynes and Swansea University have closed, and Glasgow is running at half-size, and Exeter is only at 26% of its maximum.

Edinburgh’s Your Bike system is also halved.

Other casualties include Bristol YoBike, the Lime bikes in Milton Keynes, along with Lincoln and Slough, and Oxford and Cambridge Mobike fleets are virtually gone.

Beryl were brave enough to actually launch a new system, in Norwich. It is now the fourth largest system outside of London, due to Edinburgh and Glasgow’s reductions.

Bikeshare Globally in a Covid-19-afflicted World

Some cities are seeing big increases, some are seeing big decreases. This is likely due to different operator policies, system viability, transport alternatives and user profiles:

• Some operators have chosen to reduce fleets substantially so that they can continue to operate with reduced staff or to take into account increased cleaning/disinfecting regimes.
• Financial considerations mean that systems which were losing money and not strongly tied to a public operations agreement will take this as an opportunity to shut up shop and take a breather, maybe to restructure the business.
• Where bikeshare competes with public transit, and the latter’s service is reduced or actively avoided by people social distancing, bikeshare is likely to grow. Conversely, if the private car was the alternative, bikeshare has a weaker case for being a “safer” alternative.
• Tourist-dominated systems will have seen huge drops as there are many few tourists. Utility-dominated systems will however see much less of a drop, as people still need to do the key errands such as shopping or going to work (where allowed). Commuter-denominated systems will see a big drop as there is much less commuting going on. Finally, recreational systems are probably OK as exercise is recognised as an ongoing need in many locked down jurisdictions.

Edinburgh’s Just Eat Cycles is launching pedelec (electric) bikes into its fleet on 2 March. The bikes will make up approximately 1/3rd of the fleet and will be dockable at any of the existing docking stations. Fees are 10p/minute, on top of the existing £1.50 hire charge for the regular bikes. Subscribers pay the minutely fee too but, as with the manual bikes, there is no hire charge).

More details at https://medium.com/@justeatcycles/edinburghs-rentable-e-bikes-to-be-available-from-2-march-and-cost-10p-per-minute-c4cefcdab6a5

Congratulations to Edinburgh for beating London’ Santander Cycles (which has the same operators and similar bikes). Edinburgh joins Glasgow, London’s Jump, Lime and Freebike systems, Milton Keynes’ Lime, Brighton and Exeter, in having part or all electric fleets.

An interesting article posted by Bloomberg recently highlights the challenges and commercial pressures, and public/private conflicts which are going to make bikeshare and other micromobility services a challenge to integrate into a multi-mode, multi-operator journey experience for the major-city commuter. Transport for London (TfL) recently turned down an approach from Lyft, who operate various bikeshares, rideshares and cab hires in North America but not Europe, to integrate the transactional (i.e. booking/paying) element of the Santander Cycles (owned and specified by TfL) into their own multi-modal journey planner. So, a user would no longer need to carry around a multitude of apps on their smartphone, one for each leg of the journey.

It is understandable that TfL would want to keep exclusivity on the transaction layer for their well-used and almost-profitable bikeshare system in London, but there is a big conflict – TfL is publicly funded and is acting as both the regulator (for various commercially-funded dockless/hub-based bikeshare systems) and funder/specifier (for its own bikeshare system). While TfL is presumably at pains to keep its “Chinese wall” separation between the regulatory and service-provider wings of its new mobility offerings in London, it is in practice finding this hard to do, as this case illustrates. TfL would find it hard for one side to mandate the other side to loosen control on the parts of its operations that could result it in making slightly less money – even if it would result in a much improved experience for the user.

It’s not just public bodies that are struggling with the provider/regulator split. Commercial providers, like Uber, are now making serious pushes to be the one-stop shop for people wanting to travel around cities like London, be it on their own cab service or bike fleet, or by public transport. Of course, their apps will only show services that are not directly competing with their own – so only Uber cabs and JUMP bicycles (not any of the other 8+ bikeshare providers in London) but including the tube and railways, as these are a less direct competitor and cabs/bikes can plug gaps in the way railways can’t. Their hope presumably is that if commuters start to seriously use the Uber app to check train running information, the app will be heavily suggesting a cab or bike as a more appealing alternative. Google Maps has been doing this for a long time – it has long been good on public transport, and was, for a time, making Santander Cycles docking stations obvious – now these are all but hidden by Lime bikeshare bike locations.

Unfortunately these kinds of solutions tend to be all take and no give – Uber won’t release its bike or cab locations to anyone else for free, but happily takes the open data feeds on where the tubes are and how they are running. Here, the lack of transactional capability for the public transport section is not such an issue – as users can just tap cards on barriers rather than having to buy a (virtual) ticket in another app. But it’s still an asymmetric travel opportunity. The only real solution is to mandate that all providers of MAAS have to open their live availability data. They are good at doing this in the US – sometimes too good, as companies shut down more quickly than planned as their data shows little profitable use – but it does mean that more innovation is happening there. The transactional leap hasn’t happened however, even where all operators show their assets through open data standards like GBFS or MDS. A true multi-modal, multi-operator app needs to handle the transactional (i.e. financial) part of each leg as well as the availability/discovery piece. While we are in a controlled free-for-all, with little public money contributing, the commercial operators will continue to fight with each other and keep things as siloed as possible – to the detriment of the commuter, the city, and pavement space.

JUMP has a promotion in London today. To tie in with general election day, JUMP are offering two free rides. It is being promoted as an easy free way to (and back from) your polling booth, although I would have thought most polling booths in London would be walking distance. Anyway, you don’t have to use the code to just go to vote, you can in fact use it for any two journeys in London’s operating area, today. The promotion includes two £1 unlock fees, and up to 24 minutes of usage across one or two trips. It’s worth up to £5 in total. (JUMP is 12p/min with no free period after unlocking).

The promotion runs until 11pm tonight only and use code ELECTIONDAY19ED to activate it, on the JUMP section of the Uber app. Out-of-operating-area and banned parking area fines still apply.

Beryl, who operate a small system in the City of London and larger systems in Bournemouth/Poole and Hereford, also have a free-today election themed promotion. No code is needed, and the free period is half an hour for each of two journeys – however you must remember, as always, to finish your journey in a marked hub. The promotion finishes at midnight.

JUMP has increased its charges recently – it used to offer a 5 minute free period after the £1 unlock, but now the 12p/min charge starts from the moment of hire – so most journeys now cost 60p more.

JUMP’s 1300-strong fleet operates in Islington, Camden and Kensington & Chelsea boroughs, along with a small part of south-west Haringey. They are due to move back into Hackney soon. The position of red zones in the app suggests an aspiration to launch in Tower Hamlets soon along with inner south London.

East-London startup Beryl continues to expand their bikesharing footprint – their existing hub-based operations in the City of London, Hereford and Bournemouth/Poole are being joined by a 200-300 bike system in Watford next spring. Of note, this will include 100 electric bikes – a first for Beryl.

Mixed-type systems are fairly rare due to their operational complexity for both users and operators, however both London’s Santander Cycles and Edinburgh’s Just Eat Cycles are also going to part-introduce electric bikes to their fleet. Glasgow already has such a system, but the limited numbers of electrified docks cause confusion and fines for their users.

Beryl are also expanding internationally, launching an up-to-1000-bike system in Staten Island, one of New York City’s five boroughs and not currently served by the 14000 dock-based bikeshare bikes in Manhatten, Brooklyn and Queens. Staten Island has recently withdrawn the permits for Lime and JUMP, who were operating dockless systems in the borough. Beryl’s system here will presumably also be electric, due to Staten Island’s notoriously hilly topography.

Beryl was due to expand in London to Barnet, however they recently withdrew from neighbouring Enfield due to vandalism, so they may have decided that outer-London surburbia’s low density and limited existing cycling infrastructure and opportunity is not for them.

Beryl is also expanding their London footprint to Hackney, and launching in Norwich, soon.

Both Lime and Mobike have reduced their operating areas in London, for the winter.

Lime have removed their south London “official” area and correspondingly drawn up their unofficial “unserviced” area too. They are out of Croydon, Sutton and Bromley officially, as well as Kingston and Merton. However, south of the river, they are still in Lambeth, Wandsworth and Richmond unofficially, as well as in various North London boroughs.

Lime’s official operating area:

Lime’s implicit operating area – covering the above (white area) plus an area in grey where they don’t guarantee service – i.e. they won’t stock bikes here – but you can end your journey here without penalty:

Mobike have also announced that they are once again reducing their operating footprint, for winter, however they have not yet made the change. Mobike’s current (summer) area:

While this might look like an abandonment of areas, Mobike did do the same in late 2018 and came back in early 2019, so with luck, south London’s provision will again increase next year. However, for commuters or other regular users in south London, the removal of this option must be quite frustrating!

By way of comparison, here’s the operating footprint for the other dockless operator, JUMP:

The other operators in London (Santander Cycles x2, Freebike, Beryl, KU Bikes) are dock or hub-based.

I don’t have any up-to-date information on Bird in the Olympic Park.