An arti­cle in Smart Cities Dive explores a report from the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of City Trans­porta­tion Offi­cials that found that in 2023, “shared bike rid­er­ship in the U.S. set a new record of 68 mil­lion rides, with dock-based bikes cap­tur­ing the major­i­ty of rides at 61 mil­lion.” The report also found that e‑bikes account­ed for 46 per­cent of shared-bike trips. Could that indi­cate that e‑bikes are a dri­ving fac­tor in increased shared bike rid­er­ship, pos­si­bly by open­ing the mode up to a wider num­ber of rid­ers and mak­ing longer trips more fea­si­ble?

Some addi­tion­al inter­est­ing find­ings senior reporter Dan Zukows­ki iden­ti­fied in the NACTO micro­mo­bil­i­ty report:

• Use of bike share and scoot­er share sys­tems in US cities rose 16 per­cent in 2023 over the pre­vi­ous year to 133 mil­lion total rides, just shy of the all-time high of 136 mil­lion in 2019.
• “Dock­less scoot­ers account­ed for 65 mil­lion rides in 2023, below an all-time high of 86 mil­lion in 2019.”
• The cost for rid­ers has risen sharply over the last four years: since 2019, annu­al price pass­es are up 32 per­cent in Chica­go, 30 per­cent in Boston and 21 per­cent in New York City. 
• “Cities in the U.S. and Cana­da will tal­ly 1 bil­lion com­bined [micro­mo­bil­i­ty] trips in the com­ing year.”

The trend has been con­firmed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., which broke records for sin­gle-day rid­er­ship in March. How­ev­er, the same can­not be said for Hous­ton’s pub­lic bike share sys­tem, which just last month announced it would be end­ing oper­a­tions after 12 years because of bud­get short­falls, mak­ing it the largest city in the U.S. with­out a bike share net­work.

Zukows­ki con­cludes with the report’s advice to cities look­ing to fos­ter con­tin­ued suc­cess of shared micro­mo­bil­i­ty: pub­lic own­er­ship and sub­si­dies to increase afford­abil­i­ty for rid­ers, elim­i­na­tion of sales tax on rides (sim­i­lar to pub­lic tran­sit fares), more pro­tect­ed bike lane net­works, and increased prox­im­i­ty of micro­mo­bil­i­ty sta­tions and devices to homes and pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions.