Bike-sharing has become the hot new mode of transportation for startups. Today, Lyft announced a partnership with the Baltimore Bike Share program to support new transportation hubs for bikes, and designated pick-up and drop-off spots for Lyft.
“Whether someone is taking a Lyft ride from the suburbs to the city and hopping on a bike around downtown, or taking a bike to one of these hubs and meeting a Lyft driver for a trip to the other side of town, the multimodal transportation future is very bright for Baltimore,” Lyft Baltimore Market Manager Mike Heslin said in a statement.
The partnership, which also is supported by Baltimore’s department of transportation, entails a $270,000 investment from Lyft to sponsor five of these new transportation hubs for three years. The plan is to locate these hubs at the Baltimore Visitor Center, National Aquarium, Harbor East, Hopkins Place and Shot Tower bike-share stations. The Lyft-sponsored stations will be reportedly rebranded. Through the Lyft app, Baltimore residents can see where these pickup zones are located.
Baltimore’s bike-share program, which first launched in October 2016 with 200 bikes at 20 stations, is supported by $2.36 million in state and federal grants.
“Lyft’s partnership supports the growth and sustainability of the system infrastructure throughout Baltimore City,” Baltimore City Department of Transportation Director Michelle Pourciau said in a statement. “This unique collaboration helps to address traffic congestion in Baltimore and represents our commitment for a multimodal city with fewer vehicles on our roadways.”
Lyft’s main competitor, Uber, also recently entered the bike-share space. In January, Uber partnered with bike-share service JUMP in San Francisco. Called Uber Bike, Uber customers in San Francisco are able to book JUMP’s pedal-assist bikes within the Uber app.
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