Mobi’s Stanley Park push irks bike rental businesses
The addition of five new Mobi bike share stations in Stanley Park is grinding the gears of some private bike rental shops in Vancouver’s West End.
“We don’t welcome it,” said Louis Kwan, who has been operating Bayshore Bicycle Rentals on Denman Street for 33 years.
“We don’t want to have this type of competition. It’s David vs. Goliath, with City Hall as Goliath.”
The City of Vancouver rolled out Mobi, a city-funded public bike-share program with 1,100 bikes and 117 stations, last July with the intention the service would complement the city’s walking-biking-transit commuter system. Many of the bike-share stations are located near transit hubs and other high-traffic areas.
Residents, not tourists, were the target audience.
“The whole focus of the bike-pricing system is short-term use,” Mayor Gregor Robertson said at the time. “This is to fill a gap in the transportation system so people can go from A to B.”
However, Sam Shahbakhshi, part owner of Bikes on Robson, sees Mobi’s expansion into Stanley Park as direct competition for tourist dollars.
“Tourists are using Mobi, we have definitely lost business,” he said. “If the city wants to start a bike share, then they should be giving tax breaks to bike rental companies. It’s not fair that the city, who we pay taxes to, is giving away our money to a competing business.”
The bike-share system cost the city $5 million in one-time vendor fees and startup expenses.
Mobi offers annual memberships, which range from $129 to $159, as well as 90-day memberships for $75, and daily memberships, which allow for unlimited 30-minute rides, for $9.75.
It’s the daily plan that Shahbakhshi — who rents bikes for $7 an hour, or $38 per day — has a problem with.
“I think bike-sharing is great for residents. It promotes health and it’s better for our environment. But (the daily plan) is hurting many businesses like ours,” he said.
Mia Kohout, the general manager of Vancouver Bike Share, a subsidiary of Mobi’s parent company CycleHop, says Mobi isn’t trying to compete directly with the private bike rental shops.
“We understand that’s been a concern in the past, so how we want to address that is by raising the day pass from $7.50 to $9.75, and we actively encourage any user that wants to go for longer rides to ... go to a bike store,” she said. “All the bike rental shops are identified on the Mobi maps so our users can easily find them.”
Although Mobi daily pass holders are charged overage fees of $5 per half hour for rides that exceed 30 minutes, Kohout conceded that users could ride all-day as long as they switch bikes at a new station every 30 minutes.
The bike-share program has 5,000 active members who are either on annual or 90-day plans, and Kohout says Mobi attracts as many as 200-300 daily users on sunny weekend days.
Kwan, who rents bikes for $6 per hour, says Mobi’s true impact on his business won’t be known until summer officially arrives in Vancouver.
“Right now, it hasn’t had much impact because the weather has been really bad this year,” Kwan said. “We will have to wait and see.”