Lyft in talks to peddle bike rentals

Let the bike wars begin! Lyft is on the verge of buying Motivate, the company that runs the Ford GoBike rental program in the Bay Area and CitiBike in New York, according to the Information.

The $250 million deal, which the Information said is not yet final, comes on the heels of Uber’s $200 million acquisition of dockless e-bike renter Jump Bikes in April.

Lyft declined to comment. Motivate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move would pit the two ride-hailing rivals against each other in another form of urban

transportation — one that doesn’t rely on cars. Both companies have said they see their missions as helping users get from Point A to Point B, and want to offer them different ways to do so.

Observers have noted that bikes, e-bikes and electric scooters all may be more suitable for short city hops than ride-hailed cars, which get stuck in traffic.

Bike advocates welcomed the news, saying that Lyft and Uber cars, which swerve to curbs to pick up and drop off passengers, hurt street safety. With the two companies getting into bike sharing, “We see a real possibility for the Bike Share for All program that we campaigned for to become a national model,” said Chris Cassidy, a spokesman for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. That program, which both Jump and Ford GoBike follow, provides subsidized bike rentals for lower-income people.

Motivate recently added 250 e-bikes to its stable of docked pedaldriven bikes in San Francisco.

The Information also reported last month that Lyft is pursuing rentals of dock-less electric

scooters in San Francisco, and it is talking to the Chinese company that manufactures the scooters for Bird, Lime and Spin. Those three companies burst into the San Francisco market in March, igniting controversy because they didn’t ask for permission before they did so. The city has now created a permit system for the scooters.

Brooklyn’s Motivate, an 800-person company, runs bike-sharing in several major metro areas. In New York, it drew 1.3 million riders in April; for the Bay Area, where it operates in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville, April ridership was 131,527, according to its website.

Motivate’s other programs include Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., CoGo in Columbus, Ohio, Divvy in Chicago, Blue Bikes in Boston and Biketown in Portland, Ore.

Jump operates in Washington, Santa Cruz and Sacramento, and will soon add Providence, R.I. Its Social Bicycles division runs back-end operations for bike-sharing systems in 40 markets.