How Baltimore Bike Share program came to an angry end
Before shutdown, vendor billed city more than $500,000, records show
As the Baltimore Bike Share system languished earlier this year, the program’s vendor billed the city more than half a million dollars for operational costs “highly beyond the initial level” and also asked the city to write a bulk theft report for more than 100 missing bicycles so it could file an insurance claim.
But the city reminded Bewegen Technologies, the Canadian vendor, in a June15 letter that its contract limited operating costs to $1,200 per bicycle in service. Furthermore, it said creating a bulk theft report so the company could exceed a $10,000 insurance deductible “would be committing insurance fraud.”
“It is the responsibility of Bewegen to replace the109 lost bicycles,” city purchasing agent Erin Sher Smyth wrote. “Please
provide a timeline for replacement.”
The letter was among more than 900 pages of emails, obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request, that provide a behind-thescenes look at the bike share program’s demise and its eventual replacement with the Bird and Lime scooter pilot agreement.
Among the other findings from the emails and a follow-up interview with city transportation officials:
One sponsor, the University of Maryland BioPark, requested its sponsorship end and its station be removed because of a persistent lack of bicycles.
The city Department of Transportation agreed to Bewegen’s request to describe the shutdown as “mutual,” despite the fact that the city had fired the company less than 24 hours before the shutdown was announced.
City transportation officials abandoned efforts to make the system more accessible to low-income residents — and an official with the vendor suggested low-income residents simply didn’t want the bikes.
Launched with 200 bicycles in October 2016, Baltimore Bike Share never expanded as promised, crippled by theft and vandalism that resulted in a long maintenance backlog. Struggling with few working bikes at the docking stations, the program was temporarily shut down less than a year later, and then replaced in August by the pilot scooter agreements with Bird and Lime.
City Transportation Director Michelle Pourciau said in an interview that the city’s June 15 letter to Bewegen followed a meeting that left both city and company officials unhappy.
“That was the beginning of the reality that we just weren’t going to be able to make it work,” Pourciau said.
Bewegen officials did not respond to calls or emails requesting comment.
‘No bikes again’
Riders weren’t the only ones having difficulty finding a bike this summer. In mid-July, the University of Maryland BioPark asked to end its sponsorship.
On July 13, Nora Finn, director of UM BioPark operations and tenant services, emailed Pourciau, chief of staff Eboni Wimbush and several other city officials that she had been one of the program’s “first and strongest supporters but have lost complete confidence.”
“Nobikes again at the UMBioPark!” Finn wrote. “This is a constant. I can no longer defend this program to my leadership team.”
On July 19, Tony Scott, special assistant to the chief of strategic alliances in the mayor’s office, emailed Wimbush: “FYI: We need someone from DOT to provide a response to the University.”
“We don’t want this issue to derail next week’s conversation with Dr. [Jay A.] Perman,” the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, he added.
Matt Warfield, the city planner overseeing Bike Share, replied to Finn July 25 with a list of actions the transportation department had taken since receiving her email.
City officials ordered Corps Logistics, Bewegen’s Baltimore-based maintenance subcontractor, to place bikes at the station on July 13, Warfield wrote. Three days later, they visited the bicycle maintenance warehouse in Westport and repeated the instruction, he said, only to be told “bikes were most likely checked out during the time of observation.”
“As a partner and sponsor of the BaltimoreBike Share System weunderstand how important it is that the system be a reliable transportation asset for you and your community,” Warfield wrote. “We apologize that this hasn’t always been the case.”
Councilman Eric Costello emailed Warfield Aug. 7 to ask what was going on.
“I am not trying to pound on you here,” he wrote, “but this program has been a total disappointment.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Warfield responded.
A ‘mutual’ divorce?
Baltimore sent a termination letter to Bewegen less than 24 hours before Mayor Catherine Pugh and Pourciau held a news conference on Aug. 15 announcing the shutdown of the bike share program and introducing the Bird and Lime scooter pilot program to the public. The Baltimore Bike Share bicycles and docking stations have been returned to the maintenance lot, where the city-owned equipment awaits a decision by city officials on its fate.
In its response, Bewegen protested that the city did not provide enough notice to remove all the bikes and stations.
Braunyno Ayotte, Bewegen’s director of business development and marketing, also disputed the language in the initial news release, which said the city “will be ending the current Baltimore Bike Share program.”
That statement, Ayotte said in an Aug. 15 email, “does not represent what was agreed [upon] on our call yesterday.”
“In the spirit of continuing to work in partnership on this matter,” he wrote, “can you please have this changed as per our agreement.”
The city promptly changed the news release on its website to read instead: “DOT and Bewegen will be mutually ending the current Baltimore Bike Share program.”
Asked why the transportation department had agreed to describe the shutdown as mutual, Pourciau comparedit to a divorce.
“We’ve got to sign that divorce paper, but we’re going to pick up the kids and be nice to each other,” she said.
‘Bikeshare is not for them’
Baltimore Bike Share offered a low-cost membership sponsored by the Downtown Partnership to make the program more accessible to all city residents.
On July 9, Philip Barnes, a University of Delaware professor of public policy who was working on a review of several bike share systems’ efforts to serve low-income areas, emailed Bewegen and city transportation officials to ask for a list of “programs/policies/efforts/strategies” Baltimore and its vendor had implemented to address equity concerns.
In his reply on July 18, Warfield said officials were focused on sustaining the struggling system rather than expanding access to it.
T. Chris King, the Baltimore-based marketing adviser whom Bewegen hired around the time of the system’s temporary shutdown last fall, went a step further in an email the same day.
“We have spent many months trying to reach underserved communities around Baltimore with little response or interest,” King wrote. “The general consensus seems to be that bikeshare is not for them.”
An equity component of the dockless scooter pilot agreement — urged by Bikemore, the city’s bicycle advocacy group, the emails show — requires Bird and Lime to place a certain percentage of their scooters in low-income neighborhoods each day. It’s unclear whether they’re doing so, because the companies are not reporting data as required in the agreements with the city.
In the interview, Pourciau said she believes King was incorrect that lowincome residents didn’t want bikeshare in their neighborhoods.
“I think there’s appetite everywhere,” she said. generally possessed a broad range of backgrounds.
Williams did not return messages seeking comment. Scheeler said he apprised Loh of his history and the president “advised me that he did not view these relationships as a problem given the scope of our assignment. DLA Piper also reviewed this matter before we accepted the engagement, and determined that no conflicts of interest existed.”
Nationally, other independent investigations have sought to emphasize participants’ objectivity and — in some cases — their detachment from their subjects. Attorney Kenneth Wainstein, who led an investigation of a high-profile academic scandal involving athletes and others at the University of North Carolina, declared during the probe in 2014 that it was “completely independent of the University and its faculty, staff, and administration.”
Scheeler — who helped oversee the 2007 investigation by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell into steroid use by Major League Baseball players — said many of the commission members live in Maryland.
“So not surprisingly,” he said, “we all have an affinity for the university and many of us know people involved with the campus and the Board. That said, I feel confident that personal relationships did not influence our collective thinking about our methodology or the final report we produced.”
Scheeler said the commission contacted every player Durkin coached at Maryland and spoke with 55, in addition to conducting a survey in which 94 players participated. Scheeler noted that the panel’s report included that Durkin sought the external review of player safety and that the coach had asked Evans to retain new trainers before August practices began to ensure his players’ safety.