When it was first installed in 2010, Minneapolis Nice Ride bike share was cutting edge. At the time, there were a handful of similar systems in Europe, but in North America the Minneapolis approach became an early model. It was a publicly-backed (technically nonprofit) system of bicycles set in docks that people could try out, opening up urban cycling to anyone with a credit card and courage.
Nice Ride proved the appeal of the bike share concept, which can serve as a cycling gateway. The project thrived for years as a low-barrier testing grounds, reducing an often intimidating situation into something manageable. For years, yellow and blue bikes collected downtown every day at rush hour, and linked disparate parts of the Twin Cities together during the summer months.
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A lot has changed. Bike share has exploded around the country, especially in places like New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C. The country’s largest program, in New York City, sees over 100,000 rides a day — almost as large a ridership as our entire Metro Transit system — and the country’s other top performers are in D.C., San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. Smaller cities like Portland and Pittsburgh also boast thriving bike share systems, which have grown in the years since the COVID pandemic.
Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, Nice Ride vanished from the streets. While there is still technically a bike share option in the form of the “dockless” bikes (and scooters) owned by a company called Lime, a large, seamless scalable bicycle system has been missing since 2023.
(Recall the heyday of cheap dockless bicycles, about six years ago, when a half-dozen start-ups were scattering bicycles on the streets of every U.S. city. Many of these bicycles ended up thrown into the nearest body of water, and thousands were scrapped when the companies went bankrupt.)
Nice Ride’s demise began when Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota, its main funder, pulled out. By that time, Nice Ride’s initial infrastructure had reached the end of its lifespan, and the enterprise needed investment. Without funding, the nonprofit put its assets up for sale, and a Minneapolis-based environmental nonprofit, Great Plains Institute (GPI), acquired them. The hope was that, someday, the time would be right to relaunch a Minneapolis effort.
That time is rapidly approaching.
“When the [Nice Ride] pilot was done, the equipment was not intended to last 13 years,” explained Brendan Jordan, GPI vice president. “They would have needed a significant capital investment to start over, and they didn’t have the fiscal sponsorship,”
GPI is currently identifying funding to relaunch Nice Ride in the Twin Cities and bring back docked bicycles on the streets of Minneapolis. Given the rising costs of driving, it’s an appealing prospect.
“Bike share 2.0 is going to look different; the biggest difference is the introduction of e-bikes, allowing new riders to participate [and] longer rides with less effort,” said Aaron Westling, the shared mobility program manager at GPI who is overseeing the effort.
E-bikes are an ideal technology for bike share. The audience is specifically people who aren’t committed enough, or in the right circumstances, to have their own personal bicycles with them. In those cases, reducing physical barriers with electric motors works wonders. The systems have proven appealing to tourists, and can demystify Minneapolis’ confusing geography during the summer months.
The other key variable for a rebooted Nice Ride is whether to have a docked system or a “dockless” approach, where bikes are left willy-nilly on the streets. There are pros and cons to each tactic, but Westling is a big believer in the docked system. Especially with e-bikes, docked systems allow for integrated caring, reducing the need for “rebalancing” (those pickup trucks and trailers that continually schlep bikes around town).
In addition, bike docks have changed since the Nice Ride heyday.
“[With] Nice Ride, you really had a one-size-fits-all station size that needed to be bolted into the ground,” Westling said. “Now, stations are able to be installed, not in a straight line, but whatever fits that space. Lots of cities are using them as traffic calming.”
Other innovations include streamlined payment integrated with the transit system, easier map navigation, and charging stations. The other appeal of a public system, rather than the existing haphazard Lime bikes, is that subsidies can lower costs, making rides affordable for more people. That’s important in an era where transportation prices have proven to be volatile, at best.
The plan is going to take money, however, and the team at GPI is currently finalizing their options. (They won a federal grant for bike sharing infrastructure a few years ago, but it has since been rescinded by the Trump administration.) The group completed an “equity study” last year, laying out the need for bike share in the region. Now they’re turning to state and regional funding sources. For example, one facet of the game-changing 2023 transportation sales tax dedicates money toward “active transportation.” Westling and Jordan are working with local partners to develop an application that could tap into that new source of money.
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At that point, the ball can get rolling on bringing bike share back to the Twin Cities. It’s a timely idea: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is famous for getting around town on shared bikes. With inflation and oil price spikes, people need all the alternatives to driving they can get.
“There’s the incredible cost of personal car ownership forced on families around the country right now,” GPI’s Jordan said. “Gas is top of mind, but there are [also] increasing insurance costs. We have the highest auto loan defaults in history right now, plus [there’s] public health, the, ability for folks to get around a city without emitting tailpipe emissions and making the first-last mile connection to transit.”
If and when bike share returns to the streets of Minneapolis, riders will find an improved streetcar waiting for them and more seamless experience. E-bikes alone will be a game changer. A rebooted bike share can’t come soon enough.
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