Less than two years after its much-anticipated start, Mayor Catherine Pugh and the Department of Transportation announced Wednesday that the city’s theft and vandalism-plagued bike share program will permanently cease operations today. In its place, the Mayor and DOT Director Michelle Pourciau announced the City of Baltimore has entered into an agreement to launch a new, dockless bicycle-share program in partnership with Lime, a bike and electric-scooter start-up company, and Bird, an electric scooter start-up, which began operating in Baltimore this summer.

At center of the switch is a focus on offering rental bikes and scooters in a broader swath of the city neighborhoods. The existing Baltimore Bike Share program stations were largely concentrated downtown.

“Responding to the needs of those in our city who desire efficient, accessible and low-cost modes of transportation is the basis of these new partnerships,” Pugh said in a statement. “We’re confident that these new dockless options will actually expand transportation access for residents and visitors across our city. In the meantime, we’ll continue to assess the demand for these and other innovative options as a 21st-century city determined to serve the varied transportation needs of all who live, work, study and visit here.”

Bikemore, Baltimore’s nonprofit bicycling and advocacy organization, said it supports the city’s plan to introduce the privately operated, dockless bike share and scooter systems. It also praised the city’s mandate that the placement of the new dockless bicycles include neighborhoods where 40 percent or more households earn less than $25,000.

“The existing Baltimore Bike Share system has significant shortcomings, most of all its in ability to expand to serve neighborhoods in Baltimore that need transportation the most,” Bikemore said in a press release. “Baltimore’s pilot program is designed to place more bikes and scooters in more neighborhoods than ever before.”

Baltimore Del. Robbyn Lewis (District 46), a member of state’s Environment and Transportation Committee, also praised city officials for “hitting the reset button” on bike share. “Glad to see [City DOT] shifting away from docked bike share to [a] dockless bike program,” Lewis wrote on Twitter. “Most importantly, placement will be equitable, so that communities most in need of transportation options are prioritized. Really well done.”

In ending their $2.36 million contract with Bewegen Technologies, City Hall said both the Department of Transportation and the Canadian-based bike share company “fully” acknowledge “the unique situation and challenges Baltimore Bike Share has encountered since its launch in 2016.”

Less than a year after its launch, the city was forced to temporarily shutdown the bike-share program because of theft, vandalism, and repair issues, which were contracted out to local Corps Logistics in Westport. Before re-opening last fall, Bewegen paid for additional locking security, but the system continued to struggle to keep its stations stocked with functioning bikes. The DOT said after the re-start that along with the return of the existing bike share bikes and stations, the Phase II portion of the planned bike share expansion—to 500 bikes and 50 station—would be implemented as well, but those efforts never fully materialized.

At the time, Bewegen President Alain Ayotte, the former CEO of the vendor of the Capital Bikeshare system in Washington, D.C., said the company had not faced a similar level of vandalism and theft in other cities.

“We are confident that this new partnership with Lime and Bird will enhance transportation options to a great many more citizens across our city,” said Pourciau. “The Department of Transportation will be evaluating the effectiveness of dockless technology in order to provide the citizens of Baltimore with a dockless program that enables bike and scooter share systems to operate without physical stations. Our ultimate goal is to give the citizens of Baltimore the ability to access a robust dockless program that works for everyone.”

Bird launched in Baltimore in June with more than 60 electronic scooters placed throughout the Inner Harbor, Harbor East, and Fells Point. They can be rented for $1 to start, plus an additional 15-cent per minute using the company’s mobile app. Riders can leave them anywhere when they are finished and a Bird representative will collect the scooter.

“It’s clear there’s an urgent need for additional transit options in Baltimore, and Birds are a great solution for short ‘last mile’ trips,” company spokesperson Rebecca Hahn told Baltimore. “As summer heats up, Bird offers a convenient alternative to sitting in traffic or sweating through a walk or bike ride.”

Lime operates in similar fashion, but offers both bicycles and electric scooters, and has already been rolled out in dozens of U.S. cities in the past year, posting over 6 million rides overall to date. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, in the last year, the total bike share bikes doubled in the U.S. last yea to 100,000, with 44 percent of bike share bicycles now dockless bikes, which are unlocked for rides with a smart phone app.

Bewegen is expected to remove the existing bike share inventory by end of this month. Current Baltimore Bike Share members should contact the Department of Transportation at 410-396-6802 by September 30, 2018 for refund information.

Baltimore digital content producer Michelle Harris contributed to this story.

Two steps forward and one step back.

Baltimore’s bike share system, which went through years of fits and starts before finally launching last year, will be temporarily shut down Sunday to address recurring theft, vandalism and maintenance problems this summer.

Local bicyclists began noticing—and documenting on social media—empty stations and a shortage of available bikes across the city over the past few weeks. Officially, the bike share program will be offline beginning Sunday. It is scheduled to return Oct. 15, according to the City Department of Transportation.

“I think it’s a necessary move,” said Liz Cornish, executive director of Bikemore, the city’s nonprofit bicycling advocacy organization. “Ultimately, as an outside observer who is part of the technical advisory committee on bike share, a pause in operation is probably the best way for the manufacturer, Bewegen, to address the issue of stolen bikes and the locking system.” 

In a press release, the DOT added that along with the return of the existing bike share bikes and stations next month, the Phase II portion of the planned bike share expansion—to 500 bikes and 50 stations—will begin to be implemented as well.

Baltimore’s bike share program, which started last year with a modest 200 bicycles at 20 stations, had originally been planned to double in size by this spring. But while hitting initial benchmarks in terms of ridership, the city’s bike share network has been plagued for sometime by theft, vandalism and maintenance, which eventually took a toll on reliability for users. All the vast majority of stolen bikes were eventually recovered, they were inevitably in need of repair after being wrenched from a docking station, Cornish said.

Paul DeMaio, a bike share consultant based in Washington, D.C., said that Capital Bikesharewent through some similar theft and vandalism issues in its first year, but shutting down that system wasn’t required to replace and upgrade necessary locking components. “Bikes were being stolen from the docking stations,” DeMaio said. “But the operator figured out how to replace and reconfigure the locking components, and I imagine that will be the case here [in Baltimore]. Bewegen is a new company still going through some growing pains. However, their president, Alain Ayotte, is the former CEO of the vendor of the Capital Bikeshare system.”

Currently the Baltimore bike share program has nearly 1,800 active users. Overall, nearly 10,000 individuals have used bike share bikes on roughly 40,000 trips since last fall, totaling almost 60,000 miles.

During the shutdown, upgraded security features will be added in response to thefts, according to the DOT, including always-on GPS to improve safety and security of the bike share system. 

The locking system at bike share stations were not strong enough to prevent by bikes from being wedged free from thieves at an unexpected rate, Ayotte told The Baltimore Sun.

“We don’t have this issue anywhere else, not at this level,” Ayotte told The Sun. “Our locking system is recognized [as] very, very up to industry standard, but due to the issues that occurred in Baltimore this summer, we did add additional security.”

According to Bikemore, which has been an advocate of the bike share program as well as supporting increased bicycle infrastructure across the city, the following upgrades will be done on city bike share program during its hiatus:

• All stations will be retrofitted with new locks to prevent theft.
• Address bike maintenance backlog related to theft and vandalism
• Station cleaning
• Map and Kiosk sticker upgrades (new stations means new maps)
• Pedalec technology enhancements including the ability to set your own speed or create system wide governors, like reducing max speed in high pedestrian areas like the inner harbor or in wet weather
• Refurbish bikes (some will be shipped back to headquarters in Canada where they will receive full spa treatment and return shiny and new looking)

In New York, for example, Citi Bank serves as title sponsor of their Citi Bike program, which launched in 2013 and accounted for more than 10 million trips last year. In Philadelphia, which launched its bike-share program last year, Independence Blue Cross serves as title sponsor.

“Bike share is an affordable and healthy addition to the city’s existing transportation options,” said Mayor wStephanie Rawlings-Blake, who struggled several times during Wednesday’s press conference to correctly recall the name of the city’s new bike-share program vendor. “We are excited to invest in our communities by providing a safe and sustainable way to travel in Baltimore.”

Bewegen, whose name means “to move” in Dutch, was founded in 2013 and is a relative newcomer to the bike-share business. They currently run a bike-sharing program in Birmingham, AL, with 400 bikes and 40 stations—where pedal-assist rides have proven popular, according to Decker—and a smaller program in Wolfsburg, Germany. Bewegen was also recently selected to serve as vendor for Richmond’s bike-share program, scheduled to launch this summer.

Corps Logistics, a veteran-owned business currently based in New Jersey, will oversee bike-share’s daily operations for Bewegen in Baltimore and Richmond. Company founder Jim Duffney said Wednesday it plans to moves it headquarters to Baltimore.