Here’s a chart from a recent report from NACTO (nat’l assn. of city transp. officials) showing trends in bike share ridership. As you can see, bike share is up up up! (h/t to streetsblog for the link):
Trends are encouraging nationally…
The caveat is that everything seems to be changing. As you are probably aware, Nice Ride is moving to a dockless model in the next few years, as are many other cities. And the transition really illustrates the continuing differences between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, in as much as Minneapolis seems to be very focused on being orderly — to a fault? — while Saint Paul is simultaneously more laissez faire and stubbornly local about how they are going about the transition.
The report includes a splash of cold water on the “dockless” trend (shown at right), as not many people seem to be actually using the systems as of yet.
Of course, they are still VERY new, and the growth even since 2017 is fas. So the ratio here is likely to change quickly.
Or not…