Bike Share Booms Despite a Broken Business Model

Here's How to Fix It

“Did we really just pay $26 for one bike share ride?” My partner thought there must be a mistake. We had just finished a lovely half-hour ride from a bike station near her friend’s house in Brooklyn, across the Brooklyn Bridge, to visit a newly popular neighborhood called Dimes Square. It was a great ride almost entirely on safe bikeways with great views.

But, unfortunately, the $26 fee was not a mistake. We each paid a $5 unlocking fee. For her e-bike, there was a charge of 38¢ per minute. For my regular bike, the first 30 minutes were included, but I was charged 38¢ per minute after that. For our 33-minute ride, plus 8% tax, we paid $25.58.

At that price, we could have taken a taxi and gotten door-to-door service in an air-conditioned car, no effort required.

How in the world will I convince someone who isn’t already a regular bicyclist to give this a try? One of the beauties of bike share is that one can spontaneously jump on a bike for a short trip and discover, perhaps for the first time, how easy and safe and fun it can be to go a few miles by bike. I’m not going to do that for $26!

Why is bike share so expensive?

The simplest answer is that unlike public transit or private cars, bike share gets almost no subsidy. Only 16% of public agencies provide operational funding. Yet 92% require operators to offer discount programs. This forces operators to recoup costs by charging full-price users as much as they can, resulting in a system that charges people the same fees to borrow a bike as it does to hire a car and driver!

To be clear, prices aren’t bad for the 1-2% of people who pay a fee to become members. Members get free unlocks, free minutes on regular bikes, and a lower per-minute rate on e-bikes. Our New York bike ride would have cost about $9 if we were members. In San Francisco or D.C., that same ride would cost members about $5. (See chart.)

This business model treats bike share like an exclusive club. That works great if you’re selling access to airport lounges, but it’s no way to run a transit system, and it’s a terrible model for bike share. Bike share should follow a drug dealer business model: the first hit is always free. After that first free hit, bike share should be affordable to everyone, not just members.

Consider my own use in the Bay Area. Having paid the $150 membership fee, I get free unlocks, unlimited 45-minute classic bike rides, and e-bike rides for just 15¢/minute. Since moving to my apartment across from a docking station nine months ago, I have taken 95 classic bike trips and 17 e-bike trips. That works out to a very reasonable $1.43 per trip. (See chart.)

Ditching the membership program might mean eliminating the free trips I enjoy on classic bikes and slightly more expensive e-bike trips, but compared to the $2.85 bus fare, it’s still a great deal for a faster and more fun transportation choice. It also means that everyone has access to the lower rates. Frequent riders can be protected with monthly caps on total fees, similar to how progressive transit agencies have implemented fare caps in lieu of monthly passes. It might also mean that people like me would use the system a little less, as there were definitely times I could have walked or used my own bike but chose bike share because the marginal cost was zero.

Three Changes to Fix the Bike Share Business Model

I included D.C. in my comparisons because they are one of the few publicly owned systems, and theoretically more capable than most of adopting a better business model. This is my message to DDOT, and anybody willing to make bike share an important part of our transportation system.

• Ditch the membership model.

• Set the average per trip cost to something comparable to a bus fare, with classic bike trips being cheaper than e-bike trips, of course. Subsidize as necessary.

• Cap total monthly fees so that costs, plus ebike surcharges, do not radically exceed what a membership currently costs.

The Bike Share Boom Accelerates

Meanwhile, despite the absurd pricing structure, bike share is booming! North Americans took 225 million micromobility trips in 2024, a massive 32% increase from 172 million trips in 2023, according to last week’s report from the North American Bike and Scooter Share Association. That’s an acceleration from the previous year’s growth of 9.6%.

Dig deeper and the news gets better. Shared bike trips are growing faster than shared scooter trips, which is a win for public health and safety. Most of that growth comes from e-bikes, which saw a 38% increase last year. Even better, classic bike use hasn’t dropped off dramatically. Since 2021, bikes’ share of micromobility trips has grown from 52% to 62%. (See chart.)

That bike share is growing this fast despite its broken pricing model shows how much people want to ride bikes. It’s time our government agencies recognized this and stopped treating bike share like a club for cool kids and made it a mainstream transportation option.