NYC Picks 5 Firms To Run 'Dockless' Bike Share Program

NEW YORK, NY — The city Department of Transportation named five firms Tuesday to manage a new "dockless" bike share program in the outer boroughs. Lime, Motivate, ofo, Pace and JUMP Bike will eventually provide at least 200 bikes in each of four neighborhoods where the program will launch starting later this month, officials said.

"Each of the five selected companies are leaders in this emerging field, and in the course of the pilot, we will see how they perform in diverse New York City neighborhoods that have never before seen bike share," Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said in a statement.

The dockless program, first announced last year, will be tested in Coney Island, the Rockaways, The Bronx and Staten Island before officials consider expanding it to other areas.

The initiative will let cyclists rent bikes and park them anywhere without the need for docking stations. Each company will likely have a different pricing structure, but similar programs around the country offer 30-minute rides for $1 or $2 apiece, the DOT said.

Each neighborhood will get a mix of regular cycles and "pedal-assist" electric bikes provided by JUMP or Lime, which give riders a motorized boost while requiring them to pedal.

Rockaways residents will be the first to get the bikes in mid-July, the DOT said. Pace and Lime will roll out standard bikes there at first before Lime offers additional pedal-assist bikes, which will officially be legal in the city starting July 28.

JUMP and ofo will start offering bikes in the Central Bronx in mid-to-late July, and JUMP and Lime will bring them to Staten Island's North Shore around the same time, the DOT said.

Motivate — which runs the popular Citi Bike service — will start the program in Coney Island later this year, possibly working with another company, the DOT said. The ridesharing company Lyft recently acquired parts of Motivate, though its bike maintenance and servicing operations will stay separate, according to a Lyft blog post.

The DOT visited the designated areas last month, a process that led to the expansion of the Rockaways zone to include the whole peninsula and a postponement of the Coney Island rollout, the department said.

The DOT said it will evaluate how the companies follow rules about data accessibility and privacy as well as the "safety, availability and durability" of the bikes.

"We look forward to the outcomes of this pilot as we endeavor to find innovative ways to encourage New Yorkers to choose greener, and of course safe, transportation options to move around the city," City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan), the Transportation Committee chairman, said in a statement.

(Lead image: People cycle on the Coney Island boardwalk in April 2018. Photo by Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)