WORT 89.9FM Madison

Bike Share Madison

An agreement is in place for Bicycle Transit Systems (BTS) to acquire BCycle from Trek which currently operates the bike sharing market in Madison. Alison Cohen, founder of BTS, joins the 8 O’Clock Buzz to talk about the transition and her company’s mission to get more people on bikes. The acquisition will make BTS the only vertically integrated docked bike share company in North America. But Ms. Cohen wants to assure users in Madison that their goal is not to increase profits for BTS, but rather to encourage bicycle use by offering an affordable and reliable bike sharing experience. As the great philosopher once sang, get on your bikes and ride! Image by Kate from Pixabay

Broadcast on:: 19 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

Good morning and welcome back to the Thursday 8 o'clock buzz on 89.9 FM. In Madison, Wisconsin, it was announced this week that Bicycle Transit Systems, one of the largest e-bike share systems across the United States, with hubs in American cities all across the country including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas, has acquired B-Cycle, the e-bike share company that operates right here in Madison, Wisconsin. We are on the air with Alison Cohen, the CEO of Bicycle Transit Systems. Good morning, Alison. How's it going? It's going great. Good morning, Eli. Great to talk to you. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, we're excited to have you. I know we were talking just before we got on the air. I am an avid, you know, B-Cycle writer here in Madison, and I think we're just excited to kind of hear about what the plan is with Bicycle Transit Systems and kind of what Bicycle writers can expect with this transition in the short-term and in the long-term. So maybe we can just start with who is Bicycle Transit Systems and why was this such a big deal for this acquisition of B-Cycle? Yeah, thanks for asking. We are not a private equity group. I saw some online chatter, private equity is buying and they're gonna raise prices. That is not a Bicycle Transit Systems. We're privately owned company. I'm the founder and owner of it. We're based in Philadelphia and we're obsessed with bike share. It's all we do. It's all we've been doing for our decade plus of existence. We operate bike share, as you mentioned, in Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. But this is no new thing. We have been working with B-Cycle for 10 years since our existence. We've been very close partners with Trek and B-Cycle and I've been out to Madison and Waterloo, Wisconsin, dozens of times working with them. So what B-Cycle has done in relation to us is supply bikes, trek bikes, and stations and software. And so in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and Las Vegas, it's been our employees who are operating the B-Cycle equipment. And being such close partners with them and talking strategically, we decided that we'd be stronger together. So this is what we're calling vertical integration. So it's not two different companies where we operate this equipment. Now we're going to have the equipment, the product development, the software. Under one roof, so the customer experience can be much more streamlined. The operational efficiencies can be better and we can offer bike share at a lower cost and to more people, more communities around the country. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point that you brought up there. I mean, obviously the bike share business model is a very unique one as far as high upstart cost. There's really only demand for it. What it seems to be, and correct me if I'm wrong here, demand for, you know, one bike share company in each city. So maybe talk a little bit about kind of what that relationship has been like with B-Cycle leading up to this. And kind of I think, you know, to quell any concerns, I think we might have been reading the same online forum here of, you know, what happens when it seems like, you know, the monopolization of services like this? I think people have concerns about, you know, you know, competition breeding innovation in this space and kind of what that has been like up until this point and then what can be expected going forward? Yeah, that's a great point. Let's see. I'll briefly talk about the relationship. As I say, we've had a close relationship with B-Cycle and Trek for a decade. In fact, at times B-Cycle Trek was a partial owner of my company and it's been on my board. So we've worked with them in detail. So in terms of familiarity, this is like a great thing. We know what we're getting into. They knew they're handing off their legacy to a company that really cares about the B-Cycle brand and what they've built. In terms of, so I want to say, we are into dock to bike share. Folks who have been around the country or around the world in different cities, there was a model where dock lists, bike share or scooters, it has been a thing. Yes, I think we all remember the trend of scooters strewn over all over sidewalks, all over the place that people had to step over. That's a value that we shared with B-Cycle over the years in that we didn't think that was a responsible solution for transportation, for cities, for individuals, for people who might trip over things in a sidewalk, for environmental waste that gets thrown in the lake or the river. So we never sign on to that. So this is dock to bike share. So when you talk about dock bike share, then a network effect is very important and the idea that you can't, and no company is going to invest, there's not going to be two different dock to bike share networks in the city. So when you talk about the monopolization though, that is something that, you know, that is part of what happened here. I was actually very early on, I started bike share systems in New York, Boston, D.C., Chicago. That company eventually got bought and our competitor is really going for a monopolization of this industry. And so some B-Cycle joining together really creates a very strong vertically integrated second competitor exactly for what you say because of innovation, because of price. And I think after a lot of the dockless companies have gone bankrupt, there's a real fear that there isn't going to be innovation or moving forward and one company is going to have a monopoly. So it is really important for the industry. However, like you're talking about in Madison or in any particular city, a single network is there. And transportation is a hard business. We cannot afford to just jack up prices because people stop using it. And it is as a privately held company, we are not, you know, our goal in life is not to just make profit. We have to be financially sustainable. But we are, if you look on our website, our mission is to get more people on bikes. And you know, part of this is like, I'm not here just to collect dividends. We're here to get more people on bikes and, you know, take a big swing and do it better. And this will actually power a lot more innovation, we believe, and competition in the bike share industry as a whole. Yeah. So I talk a little bit about, I mean, I think that's the interesting point here is, one, you know, this system in Madison exists all over the country and kind of in other different cities. I guess my first question is, even under under the B cycle umbrella, a lot of these companies exist under, you know, different names, you know, cat bike, red bike, green bike, everybody sees these in different cities, even though they all are under the B cycle umbrella. Is there a plan for allowing users to understand, use the same system in different cities when they're traveling or how does that work? Yes, we would like to be able to use to create a nationwide app that you can log in once and go to any of our cities and use the same app. They've been branded, you know, this goes back, I started Capital Bike Share in Washington, DC, which is the first, one of the first large bike share systems in the nation. And talking to the clients at the time who run the transit agency, they really wanted the bikes to be identified as part of the public transit system. This is the same in LA. It's LA Metro. And so there is this real balance between providing that branding that everybody knows and relies on and is associated with public transit and is sometimes publicly subsidized versus having that sort of single brand across the nation. That problem hasn't been solved. I think it's like it's a good, it's a nice balance between, you know, these users who might use it all over the country who are really trying to get to demonstrate the localized feeling of that system. But I will say it is one of our goals to have a single login app that you could use all over the nation at our systems. So I mean, real quick, Tony has a question for you. Hi, Alison, this is Tony Castan, the other here. Yeah, what about Madison's use of the B cycle system that attracted y'all here? And also, I guess another part of this question is what other, you mentioned other cities that bicycle transit systems operates? What are, what are those other cities? First of all, let's talk about Madison. Yeah, so Madison goes back, it launched, I believe in 2008. Anyway, I got B cycle founded in 2008. So maybe you have a different year. B cycle founded in 2008, I believe Madison was around 2011. Got it. And because it's Trek's hometown, Trek took a big swing at bringing bike share to Madison and no cost to the city. And I want to call out, I believe, is in 2019, Madison, Wisconsin was the first system potentially in the world that went all electric. And that was, again, a big swing at the time. It was a huge pioneering move. And within the first year, ridership increased 300%. So the, you know, Madison has always been incredibly bike friendly. Obviously, the strong, you know, academic and student population, population density in support of the city. And a ton of local businesses who have also invested in the system have been great. So Madison is, you know, has always been B cycles flagship system. And we're really excited to continue. I do want to say no Wisconsin employees are moving because of this acquisition. We're opening an office in Madison to both continue to support the system, but also allow the employees to keep their families where they are. And then in terms of there are 10 systems that B cycle owns and operates, which are now going to come under the same operation umbrella. So that's Santa Cruz, California, Santa Barbara, Truckee, Nevada, Bentonville, Arkansas, Greenville, South Carolina, Broward County, Florida, Boulder, Colorado. And I can't remember, I think I might be missing too. But they're all over the country. They're of different sizes. And we're really excited to bring that diversity of different communities, different businesses under the same operations umbrella. That's awesome. Well, like I said, you know, I am an avid B cycle writer here. And one of the things, you know, that I talk about when people see me pull up on my B cycle is, you know, kind of this unique experience that people have with the B cycle where it is. Initially, when they hear about it, love it, great idea, ease of use. And then obviously, in practice, occasionally people run into problems. I know people run into issues with, you know, bikes being broken, bike stations, you know, being full when they go to drop off their bike, if people don't realize, then you got to go, you know, to another station or the e-bike not being charged. I'm wondering, you know, kind of with these, these use cases of, you know, from my perspective, that can be uniquely frustrating when you try to use a new system, you know, there's nothing worse than arriving at your destination and then realizing, you know, you need to bike to another station or you show up to a station and there's no bikes, these types of things. How will, you know, I guess, bringing in kind of the data and the analytics and the use cases from different cities kind of inform decision-making as far as new infrastructure that needs to be built or new things that need to be created to kind of, you know, help eliminate those really frustrating use cases for users when they come and try to use the system. Yeah, no, totally understand and this is, this is a bread and butter of what we have done by transit has done. Excuse me for the last 10 years, we're totally obsessed with operations and operational tools and stuff. We have typically operated on a scale that's larger than the B cycle smaller systems, so to your point we are planning on bringing, actually I'm just going to use that tech buzzword, AI dispatching software that helps us prioritize tasking for the operations team and that helps us, you know, when we have rather than, you know, a whole bunch of different operations that are not really talking, you know, might talk to each other a bit with, you know, eight or nine people. Suddenly we have 200 people who are experts in operations around the country, so we're hoping to bring that sort of shared knowledge to the operations and, I mean, at the end of the day though, bikes don't repair themselves, bikes don't move themselves. We are also in a process of developing induct charging, induct charging stations and, you know, we plan to be piloting and so that the electric bikes can charge in the dock so that you don't have to swap the batteries. So that also reduces the potential of, you know, batteries being low and stuff. So we're excited to bring both the product development, innovation, as well as that operational expertise that you should see, you know, over the next year or two, we'll hope that you'll see, you know, better, better repaired bikes, fewer full or empty stations and overall better service, because that's sort of our bread and butter and bring that sort of large city scalability to the local local and Madison. Allison, what if any changes might riders and regular uses of the B cycle? The C once BTS takes over the operation here. So we don't expect in the short term to see, you know, one of our going into this acquisition, we are, for both the employees and the riders, expect minimal disruption or, you know, we don't think that you definitely won't see any difference in this high fall riding season. We are going to be integrating our software teams, so there are potential that you see changes in the app and say we're going to be integrating our operational teams. I would expect that, especially considering the harsh winters in Madison, next spring, you know, we would hope to sort of have a whole new set of operational standard operating procedures and, you know, so I would expect by next spring you'll start to see some differences and hopefully, you know, better service on the local front. Awesome. Well, thank you, Allison. We've been speaking with Allison Cohen from Bicycle Transit Systems, taking over the B cycle system here in Madison, Wisconsin and cities all over the country. Thank you for being on the show, Allison. All right, thanks so much for having me.