Lyft announced today that they are completing the acquisition of America’s largest bikeshare service, Motivate. Headquartered in New York City, the company is responsible for the growth of the country’s most ridden bikeshare systems, including: Citi Bike (New York), Ford GoBike (San Francisco Bay area), Divvy (Chicago), Bluebikes (Boston Metro area), Capital Bikeshare (Washington, D.C. metro area), BIKETOWN (Portland), CoGo (Columbus, Ohio), and Nice Ride (Minneapolis).
Last year, 80% of all bikeshare rides in the US were completed on Motivate systems. And earlier today, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City and Lyft will be dramatically expanding Citi Bike, tripling its size to 40,000 bikes.
Lyft feels that Bikeshare is a natural extension of their vision to improve transportation access, sustainability and affordability. The growth potential for bikeshare to transform the landscape of our cities is massive. The benefits of bikeshare are evident and they want to help take bikeshare to the next level and add thousands of bikes and stations in communities that haven’t had access to transportation. To make bikeshare membership more convenient and affordable than ever; and deploy new electric bikes on a major scale. Lyft’s overall work with bikes and scooters will help us reach our goal of taking one million cars off the road by the end of 2019.
“Today, Lyft takes a large step forward in our vision to provide a more sustainable transportation experience that will bring together all your favorite ways of getting around into one unified Lyft app,” said Lyft Co-Founder and President John Zimmer. “We’re excited to introduce new and exciting mobility products in the months ahead for our city partners and riders.”
