Why Dockless Bike Share Doesn't Threaten Docked Bikes

Dockless bikes are complementing their docking elders in some cities, bike-share experts said in Chicago last week, instead of—as some had feared—driving them to extinction.
"There’s a rising-tide-floats-all-boats effect that’s happening in cities where there’s a coexistence between dockless and dock-based systems," said Alex Vickers of Jump, the Uber-owned company that provides bikes, e-bikes and scooters in about 20 cities. "There’s so much demand for bicycling right now that in order to serve it you really have to have both of these modes working together."
To boot, dockless companies have discovered that electric-assist bikes are much more popular than pedal bikes, and charging can happen conveniently at docks. Hybrid systems seem to be emerging that allow users to leave bikes anywhere but find a more reliable supply of fully-charged bikes at docks.
"I think it’s a hybrid, really, where you can park outside the dock if you want to," Vickers said, "but if you want to park your bike at a transit station that has our charging infrastructure that’s really great for us, you can absolutely do that."
The dramatic advent of dockless bike share in 2017 and 2018 alarmed some city officials. Cities like Chicago and New York protected their legacy docked systems (and their public space) by holding dockless bikes at bay or confining them to outer neighborhoods. But London let dockless bikes in, and London's older docked system has flourished.
"In London, the docked-bike system has been there since 2010, so nine years. We have four dockless providers, and the docked bike-share option had its biggest ever day in recent weeks," said Matthew Clark, a disruptive technology analyst with London's Steer Group. "It’s competition—but healthy competition."
Mobility activist Caroline Samponaro, now a policy maven for Lyft, said it was a mistake to ever think dockless would displace docked:
"They (docked systems) took years to get off the ground, and they didn’t just take years to get off the ground because it’s hard to survive on the ground. It took years to build the support for it, the demand for it, the appetite for it and then the ridership to sustain it," Samponaro said at the Shared Use Mobility Summit in Chicago last week. "To get to a future state where we’re serving entire cities, we can’t leave that reality behind. We need to carry forward with us to keep building on that success."
Vickers, though, reminded everyone of the user experience dockless bikes offer, in which riders can find and park bikes just about anywhere, what he called the "A to B magic" of dockless bikes.
Amanda Woodall, Chicago's liaison to its Divvy bikeshare system, suggested docked systems are almost as flexible. They're solar-powered, stand-alone systems that she said can be set up anywhere in 45 minutes.
"So for us, do we look two years down the road and say, 'Gee we invested in this dock-based system but now the whole world is dockless. Boy, what do we do with this albatross' or whatever? That’s not the case at all. We see a lot of flexibility and a lot of options for whatever comes."
Whatever comes might include a change in mindset for some public officials.
"It’s super frustrating if we get locked into an approach for the next ten years," said Bill Dossett, executive director of Minneapolis' docked system, NiceRide, which has survived the arrival of dockless Lime bikes. "That’s the way we think about and structure projects as a civil engineer. I think that’s one of the things that we need to break. We need to start thinking of what we do as a technology service that’s in a continuous cycle of change."
Bike-share companies generally want whatever comes to include more bikes. They say competition has been good for them. More bikes on the street means more bicyclists, said Evan Castigliola of Lime.
"To get to the level of supply you need to catch up to the demand, we encourage competition," Castigliola said. "We actually want multiple providers out on the street to provide more supply. More is better for us, because more supply changes the user habit. More people use dockless mobility or docked mobility."