Riverside to shut down bike-share program in October - Press-Enterprise

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A program that lets Riverside visitors and residents rent electric-motor-assisted bicycles for travel around the city’s downtown will end in October.

The Riverside City Council voted 7-0 Tuesday, Sept. 1, to discontinue Bike Riverside when the program sunsets next month, after vandalism and the coronavirus pandemic sharply undercut ridership and revenue during its two-year run.

“This was a great idea and worth trying,” City Councilman Jim Perry said. “It just got to the point where we could no longer afford it.”

Mayor Rusty Bailey said the move to sunset the program was disappointing, though there are reasons for doing that. He said, however, there remains a need to find ways to encourage people to get out of cars and use other modes of transportation.

Councilman Ronaldo Fierro urged the city to explore ideas for introducing another, similar initiative with the promise of being more successful.

The program launched in November 2018, around the time that scooters debuted across a wider area of Riverside.

Canada-based Bewegen Technologies built seven stations, six equipped with a touchscreen payment and information kiosk, and stocked them with 55 electric bicycles, a city report said.

Three stations are on Main Street, one is at the Fox Plaza, one is at the downtown Metrolink train station, one is at Riverside City College and another is at Orange Street and University Avenue. The station at Mission Inn Avenue and Main Street, near the Mission Inn, has seen the most use.

Riverside paid $333,943 for the two-year service, Public Works Director Kris Martinez wrote in the report. Continuing the program would have cost an additional $18,000 per year.

The program got off to a strong start with riders taking more than 1,000 trips the first month.

It proved popular with people staying in hotels, Senior Traffic Engineer Nathan Mustafa told the council.

“We had a lot of folks visiting the downtown because of the Festival of Lights,” he added.

But the report shows ridership never again approached the level of that initial burst.

Mustafa said use declined sharply as winter rains set in, and climbed through the following spring.

Then ridership plummeted abruptly. Martinez wrote that a wave of vandalism damaged 75% of the fleet in summer 2019 and the system temporarily shut down.

After repairs were made, Mustafa said use began to build again in fall, before the pandemic ground the program to a halt in March.

Bike Riverside generated enough revenue to cover 6.8% of operating costs the first year, Mustafa said.

“It’s not a sustainable model for moving forward,” he said.

Besides providing a travel option, the program brought some benefits.

Mustafa said riders pedaled 10,433 miles, burning 1,632,925 calories and curbing carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 5.4 tons.

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