R.I.P. Bike share in Dayton. For all the wrong reasons.

I’m sure someone will call me a liar or claim it to be their idea, but bringing B-Cycle ^[1] (the brand of bikes Dayton bought) to Dayton happened right here on this blog, and in the offices of college presidents and the Miami Valley Bike Summit.

I first read about B-Cycle in an ad publication. Alex Bogusky, the “Creative director of the decade” from 2000-2010 according to AdWeek Magazine ^[2], had partnered with client Trek Bicycles, Humana Health Care in Louisville to launch “B-Cycle” a bike share system. I thought it was an amazing idea and would be great in Dayton and I reached out to Alex. He put me in touch with the CMO of Bcycle at the time, Andrew Davison ^[3] who shipped a sample bike to me, as well as all the booth materials (I still use a Bcycle water bottle when I play hockey) in preparation for the first Miami Valley Bike Summit. I got former Metroparks head, Marvin Olinsky to ride it around the parking lot (the event was in the UD building that houses DECA) and talked to a bunch of people. You can read all the posts on this site ^[4]to watch the progress. My lunch meeting with then UD President Dan Curran, in his private dining room, just the two of us, at a huge table, kicked off one of my most valued friendships. It took more than a few discussions with Dr. Mike Ervin to get him on board. And when it finally came to fruition, no one wanted to invite me to the party. It was their idea, not mine.

Now that Link is announcing it’s shutting down Sept 30, 2024 ^[5], I’m sure, they’ll have no problems saying it was my dumb idea. But, here’s the thing, my vision and their implementation were two different things.

Because their site may go away, and this blog won’t, I’ll include the whole text of their mea culpa here:

Link’s Story

LINK Dayton Bike Share will suspend operations this fall, September 30th 2024.

LINK Dayton Bike share is a program ran by Bike Miami Valley, a non-profit cycling advocacy organization.

LINK Dayton Bike Share was launched in May of 2015 in the spirit of community collaboration between and has served the Dayton core for 9 years.120,665 Trips to date with 66,790 total unique users. LINK Dayton Bike Share was created to make biking more accessible for all, provide “last mile” transportation throughout the urban core, as well as improve livability, and provide a healthy, environmentally friendly mode of transportation.

Bike share systems across the nation are facing unique challenges that have proved difficult for these donor funded systems to navigate, including rising costs, operational challenges, rising expenses for insurance and a lack of insurance providers willing to cover bike share programs. These have also impacted the LINK Dayton Bike Share system and are major contributors to the decision to suspend operations.

Downtown Dayton has changed drastically since LINK Dayton Bike Share was first introduced, with increased housing, entertainment, restaurants on the positive side with less workforce active during working hours.

LINK Dayton Bike Share sees annually: over 50K rides in recent years, with 5K unique users and currently has 38 stations throughout downtown Dayton, nearby neighborhoods, and the University of Dayton campus.

The LINK system has historically been supported by donors and sponsorships, with only a small portion of revenue coming from ridership.

We want to show gratitude for all the Founding Sponsors of Link: Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Bonbright Distributors and New Belgium Brewing Company, CareSource, City of Dayton, Five Rivers MetroParks, Montgomery County, PNC, Premier Health, Public Health – Dayton and Montgomery County’s Creating Healthy Communities Program, Sinclair College and the University of Dayton for their support.

Bike Miami Valley’s mission “to advocate, promote, and create opportunities for all forms of bicycling in the Miami Valley” will continue as it has since the organization’s founding in 1979. The Regional Chapters will continue to conduct advocacy and events. Bike Miami Valley will continue to support the Miami Valley Cycling Summit, held next, in Springfield in 2025.

Bike Miami Valley and LINK are currently open to other possibilities for the continuation of the LINK Dayton Bike Share system, including a transition to another community partner.

Dayton isn’t the only bike share system to be shutting down, Cincinnati shut theirs down last year ^[6]– then raised money and reopened this year ^[7]. But, the list of places that gave up is daunting, with many of them Bcycle systems.
Seattle ^[8], Denver ^[9], Worchester ^[10], Phoenix ^[11], Houston ^[12], Baltimore ^[13], Santa Monica ^[14] to name a few.

The only community that gets it right is Indianapolis who bet the farm on investing in their system where they made the entire system free this year ^[15].

If you want to empower people to get to work, the store, shops, and change the equation of mobility, this is the answer.

Public Utility/MicroMobility/Connect the dots

I’ve ridden bike share in Paris, London and NYC. And while you’ll say those are much bigger cities, with much higher density of people, the key to this whole shebang is connecting people with places. Thinking of the system more like sidewalks and roads, instead of like buses, taxis or cars is the first key to why you want and need bikeshare, and why it failed in Dayton.

Just as we’re getting a higher density of residents in Downtown Dayton is the exact wrong time to end bike share. And, while people like me, who already live downtown won’t miss it as much; I have a garage and a few bicycles already. If I want to go to the Levitt for a show, or meet someone at Sinclair or UD, or go to lunch at Old Scratch, it’s faster and more efficient for me to ride my bicycle than it is to drive my car as long as it’s not raining. Riding a bicycle for people who live in the Delco Lofts, the Cannery, or any of the other apartments opening up would be preferable as well, if they have a place to conveniently store their bike. I don’t have to find a bike, use my app to unlock it, and pay per minute to ride it. I have a bike. Since the downtown residences already pay a premium tax through the “Special Improvement District” that funds the “Downtown Dayton Partnership” wouldn’t it make sense to give their residents free access?

When it comes to bike share, there are two philosophies; docks and dockless. Dayton went with docks, and that means you have to return the bike to a station, instead of just dropping it anywhere like a scooter. Because of that, the initial placement and the cost of the stations were critical elements. Was there a station at the Wayne Ave Krogers making it convenient for UD kids or downtown residents to ride to the grocery store? Nope. The closest station was behind Ghostlight coffee on Wayne at Clover. Plus Wayne avenue is a super scary road to ride a bike on. It was decisions like this, that partially doomed the system. You also didn’t see stations across the river at first, or expansion for the Gem City Market. Docks forced a limited radius.

There was also the cost to ride. The original system worked on a key card and debit cards and memberships. I have my original card, that I paid $65 for that would give me unlimited 30 minute rides for a year. I never activated it, because I had a bike.

NYC has had similar changes and now they’ve allowed a private company (Lyft) to administer their system. From the NY Times ^[16] 16 Sept 2024:

How much should a Citi Bike ride cost? More than the subway? Less than a cab?

Citi Bike, New York’s bike share program, is thriving. In May, the company announced an “all-time record” of 162,811 rides ^[17] on a single day. Last week, that number jumped to a new record: 193,545 trips in one day ^[18]

But as the number of rides taken climbs, so do the prices; there have been two increases this year alone.

“It’s really freaking expensive to do $8 or $9 bike rides three or four times a day to get where you need to go,” said Lincoln Restler, a City Council member who lives, works and bikes in Brooklyn. “I just don’t think that’s what bike share is about.”

Restler just introduced legislation to cap the cost of a short Citi Bike ride ^[19] at the cost of a subway or bus ride ^[20]: $2.90.

Gabe Brosbe, a Williamsburg resident who frequently rides a Citi Bike to work in Manhattan, emailed Street Wars last month to express concern about the pricing and the lack of competition faced by Lyft, which runs Citi Bike and has a contract with the city until 2029. “It appears to me that this is a private monopoly being treated as a public utility,” he said.

In 2012, an annual Citi Bike membership was $95 and rides by members were free for the first 30 minutes. After that, rides started at $2.50 for members and $4 for nonmembers.

Now, annual memberships cost $220 a year. (Even after accounting for inflation ^[21], that’s an increase of almost $100.) This year alone, the e-bike fees have increased to 24 cents a minute from 17 cents for members, and to 36 cents a minute from 26 cents for nonmembers.

Elizabeth Adams, the interim co-executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit organization aimed at reclaiming New York City from cars, is also a Citi Bike enthusiast.

She loves the e-bikes, she said, because “meeting up with friends or going somewhere, especially going over the bridges, I don’t want to show up sweaty or gross. E-bikes are great for that! Your outfit looks good, your hair looks good. You don’t have to worry.”

She agrees with Restler that the city should step in on pricing. “If you’re treating this as a public transit system, then it should match the others,” she said, comparing Citi Bike to New York’s ferry system, which is heavily subsidized.

As a side note: Lyft, who runs the NYC system, tried to encourage people to earn some money by paying them to redistribute bikes, but wouldn’t you know it, some folks figured out how to game it and cash in. The Hustlers Who Make $6,000 a Month by Gaming Citi Bikes ^[22]

In Dayton, we have no problems spending money on demolishing buildings, or giving away tax dollars to wealthy developers in this town, but for some reason, we felt we had to look at bikeshare as a business, instead of a public asset for all.

Bikeshare wasn’t cheap, it wasn’t for the poor, and it didn’t have enough stations to be truly useful. Like could UD students ride to UD arena on it? Nope.

My initial vision was to give every UD student and Sinclair student access to the bikes as part of their student activity fees. The bikes would be signed out in their names, and the university could hold them accountable for misuse or damage of the bikes (which is the reason they required credit cards and ID to ride). With a base of 30K+ riders, the students would venture further into the city, and spend their money at places further than walking distance (Brown St for UD) and help keep a strong street retail ecosystem working. The beauty of this is when on a bike, you don’t take up parking spaces needed by suburbanites coming downtown. The impact on the Oregon District would have been huge, making lunch there a real possibility for both colleges.

Yes, Bcycle bikes cost a lot more than a regular old bike due to their durability as well as their tracking and locking systems. Some well meaning pastor had an idea to paint regular old bikes yellow and leave them around town for free rides ^[23]. It didn’t take long for them to become free bikes. You have to have the constraints of accountability and trackability for a system to work.

The city has spent tens of millions to reinvent the Arcade 2x now. They’ve spent hundreds of millions on the too small Convention Center and it’s massive garage. Why is the idea of subsidizing free public mobility so inconceivable. Given a choice between the braintrust of the Downtown Dayton Partnership or a free Bikeshare system to make it easy for people downtown to move around, I easily vote for bikes, and keeping the “ambassadors” who keep things clean and are an amenity. If you asked the building owners of the downtown Special Improvement tax district would dockless bikes downtown and around the periphery be a better investment than glorified realtors trying to market their buildings they might say yes please, we’d like to keep the bikes.

The addition of electric bikes brought additional costs, but also brought happier customers. While most of downtown is relatively flat, there is still a feeling of increased safety on an electric bike that can keep up with traffic and also doesn’t make you sweat so much. This may have been the biggest contributor to the profit equation failing for Link. The model was never built to handle the additional costs of swapping batteries in more expensive bikes. But, the electric bikes, like the scooters, were ground breaking in increasing ridership. People don’t love to sweat pumping the pedals to move a 35lb non-electric bike. The electrics solved that.

In my last campaign for City Commission I was advocating for making RTA free for all. Instead, the only free bus we have is the “Flyer ^[24]” that shuttles people from Milano’s on Brown Street downtown and back running every 10 minutes. It’s subsidized by UD and Premier and well used, but, the power of free public transit is a powerful economic development engine that could do more to lift so many out of poverty it’s sad that we can’t have that conversation because, well, Esrati said it first. ^[25]

Considering that cars, gas, insurance, maintenance and parking all add up to the cost of living, second only to the cost of housing, it’s too bad we don’t look for ways to lift people out of poverty so elegantly and efficiently (and even make them healthier). But, then again, Detroit lobbied hard to build highways in the name of “national defense” and pushed the premise of a car for everyone to spell the end of passenger rail in most of our country.

Our government pays for highways, it pays for airports, but when it comes to paying for something as cheap and environmentally friendly as a bike share system, we just can’t find the funds.

Imagine that.

Riding for the City- a song by David Esrati