Bike sharing:
S.F. issues permit application for stationless bicycles
San Francisco action might pave the way for more competition with the expanding Ford GoBike program.
San Francisco has issued its permit application for stationless bike-sharing operators, which could pave the way for more systems to compete with the expanding Ford GoBike program.
The application, published June 30, includes some financial and other requirements that don’t apply to Ford GoBike, the station-based bike-sharing operation that’s expanding in the Bay Area. That program started in San Francisco and San Jose last month and expanded to Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville on Tuesday.
Bike sharing is a huge phenomenon, especially in China, where a stationless, park-anywhere model has attracted billions of dollars in funding. Bay Area officials are hoping bike sharing will catch on here too — though they prefer the bikes to stay in dedicated stations when not in use.
Stationless bicycles can be parked anywhere it’s legal to park a bike because the locking and locator technology resides solely on the bike. The upside is that stationless bikes can be used anywhere in the city, not just where stations are available. The downside is that they could end up cluttering sidewalks.
San Francisco has somewhat of a vested interest in Ford GoBike, a public-private partnership between the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the five participating cities and Motivate, the Brooklyn, N.Y.,
company that’s operating the system under a 10year contract. San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland waived their permitting fees for Motivate, said Dani Simons, a spokeswoman for the company. However, the commission and five cities stand to share 5 percent of sponsorship revenues that exceed $7 million a year and of ridership revenues that exceed $18 million a year.
Still, at least three companies — Social Bicycles, Spin and LimeBike — say they want to start stationless sharing in San Francisco. Bluegogo, a Chinese company that started an uproar in January when it tried to launch stationless sharing in San Francisco without a permit or business license, has decided not to enter the market.
In March, the board of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the Board of Supervisors passed transportation code amendments that prohibited stationless bike sharing without a permit. The permit application issued last month “tries to mirror” the Motivate contract, said Jamie Parks, the agency’s bike-sharing program manager.
Both the stationless permit and the Motivate contract require bikesafety features, customer service and “rebalancing” to make sure bikes don’t all end up in one place. Both require operators to make at least 20 percent of their bikes available in what the commission calls “communities of concern.”
The stationless bikesharing permit requires operators to provide “unlimited trips under 30 minutes” to low-income customers. Motivate is required to offer them a discounted $60 annual membership, but Motivate is providing it for only $5 the first year.
The big difference is fees. The permit requires stationless operators to pay startup fees ranging from $12,208 to $19,558, annual renewal fees ranging from $9,725 to $17,074, and $2,500 a year to cover potential repairs to public property.
For every two bikes that they put on the street, stationless operators will have to pay the city to acquire and install a bike rack that can accommodate two bikes, at a cost of roughly $90 each.
That seems odd, since the permit allows stationless bikes to be parked in public bike racks or in the “furniture zone” of sidewalks, the area closest to the curb, where benches, kiosks, trees and utility poles are allowed.
But Parks said the city required the rack fee because “we would still prefer that they be parked in racks to make sure they are not blocking pedestrian traffic.”
The city waived its station-permit fees for Motivate because “the alternative was spending $18 million of public funds” to expand the Bay Area Bike Share program, which was started with taxpayer dollars. Ford GoBike is reportedly getting $49 million over seven years from its primary sponsor Ford Motor Co.
San Francisco has allowed scooter-sharing service Scoot Networks and car-sharing services such as Zipcar to operate without a permit from the transportation agency. However, the city recently approved a parking permit that will allow electric-scootersharing services to park on streets with residential parking permit restrictions for $325 per year per scooter. The board will consider a parking permit for carshare services such as Zipcar next week.
Bluegogo has decided not to offer bike sharing in San Francisco or any other U.S. city. “We did not anticipate the major changes in bikeshare regulations and the red tape processes that differ city by city,” Rebecca Kufrin, an executive with public relations firm Skyya Communications, said in an email. Instead, Bluegogo, which also makes bikes, has decided to sell them to other U.S. bike-sharing companies.
Other companies say they are eager to work with the city. “We are looking very closely at the recently released San Francisco permit with the expectation that we will successfully be able to complete a permit and operate” in the city, said LimeBike vice president Andrew Savage. The San Mateo company has gotten $12 million in venture funding from investors led by Andreessen-Horowitz. It operates stationless systems in Key Biscayne, Fla.; Greensboro, N.C.; and South Bend, Ind. It plans to launch in South Lake Tahoe this week and Seattle next week.
Social Bicycles of Brooklyn, which operates bike sharing in 27 cities, plans to introduce electric bike sharing in San Francisco under the name Jump. It started a demonstration project in the Bayview neighborhood while awaiting the permit application. Although its system is stationless, it requires bikes to be locked into a bike rack.
Its CEO, Ryan Rzepecki, said he expects to have some discussions with the city about the new permit but doesn’t see anything “that will make it not viable for us.”
Spin, based in San Francisco, looks forward to working with the city “to develop a path forward that works for everyone, so that all San Franciscans can enjoy the ease, affordability and equity of stationless bikesharing,” CEO Derrick Ko said in an email.