St. Louis finally joins the nationwide “bike-share” trend Monday when two rival companies begin offering their app-based rentals across the city.
The companies are placing a total of 1,500 bikes on edges of sidewalks and in other spots across the city — 750 each allowed initially under the city permits issued to the two firms.
Those numbers could expand later this year depending on demand.
The competing companies, LimeBike of California and China-based Ofo, each use the so-called dockless business model.
They’ll be renting out the bright green LimeBikes and yellow Ofo bikes without the fixed docking stations used in many other cities that jumped on the bike-share bandwagon over the past decade.
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Instead, the bikes are tracked using GPS and customers use the company’s smartphone app to find one nearby. When they get to the bike, they scan in a code to unlock it and pedal it to wherever they want to go in the city.
They drop off the bike at their destination, lock the bike wheel and the companies charge their credit card based on the time used. The bike is left for the next user.
“This is great for the city of St. Louis and the metropolitan area,” said Deanna Venker, the city traffic commissioner. “This has been long coming.”
Mayor Lyda Krewson and representatives of the two companies will be among those at a news conference Monday morning at Kiener Plaza downtown to talk up the new system.
LimeBike and Ofo both plan to eventually offer electric bikes and electric scooters in St. Louis as well, but not at first.
The two firms and other dockless firms have expanded rapidly across the U.S. over the past year. One advantage for cities: the governments don’t have to spend or get someone else to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for docking stations and ticket kiosks.
A disadvantage in some locales, however, has been bicycle clutter on sidewalks and in other places.
To try to avoid that, St. Louis has imposed regulations barring parked dockless bikes from blocking driveways and other entrances to private property.
The rules also require parked bikes to be upright and to allow at least a 5-foot-wide unobstructed area on sidewalks. The companies must monitor the bikes’ locations and move any in violation within 2 to 10 hours after receiving notice, depending on the time and day.
If the situation ever gets out of hand, the regulations give the city authority to eventually use GPS “geofencing” to require the companies to limit bike drop-offs to specified areas such as street parking spaces that potentially could be set aside for the bikes.
“If there is a problem, those items give us the ability to add restraints to the operation,” Venker said.
The companies aim their wares at whoever wants to ride — commuting students or workers, tourists checking out city attractions or people simply out for some exercise.
Both firms offer their bikes for hire at any time, day or night. You have to be 16 to rent a nonelectric LimeBike; Ofo’s minimum age is 18.
Ofo will charge $1 per hour and LimeBike $1 for each half-hour. However, LimeBike official Sam Sadle contended that for most users “there’s no price differential” because most rides in its existing markets are for less than 30 minutes.
LimeBike offers discounts, including a 50-cent-per-half-hour rate for students and school faculty and staffers with an email address ending in .edu.
Ofo spokesman Jordan Levine said his company is working on a college student discount.
Sadle said LimeBike in its initial bike placement emphasized the city’s central corridor from downtown to around Forest Park but that there would be bikes elsewhere as well.
Levine at Ofo said “our goal is to make sure we’re as expansive as possible.”
Where they end up over time will largely depend on what the public wants, Venker said.
“This is a business,” she said of the companies. “If they’re not getting ridden, they’re going to be put in places where the bikes are going to get ridden.”
City regulations, however, require that the companies deploy at least 20 percent of their bikes in several designated lower-income areas on the North and South sides. Those areas all are within three miles of MetroLink.
The city also requires the firms to offer payment options for people who don’t have smartphones and or credit cards. Both companies say they are developing those for use here but they’re not ready yet.
Unlike some traditional bike rental businesses such as one that has operated in Forest Park for years, it’s impractical for the dockless firms to provide bike helmets.
While St. Louis will have dockless competition, LimeBike has lined up exclusive rights to offer the service in Alton. Sadle said a start date has yet to be determined there.
He said his company also has been talking with officials in other area communities about possible expansion. Levine of Ofo said expansion to neighboring municipalities also is a possibility for his company.