Lyft has completed its acquisition of bikeshare company Motivate and plans to invest $100 million to expand in New York City.
The acquisition was first announced in July with Lyft saying that Motivate is the largest bikeshare service in the U.S. with schemes across a number of cities and 80% of all bikeshare rides in the U.S completed on Motivate systems.
Now plans have been unveiled to triple Citi Bike to 40,000 bikes.
Subscribe to our newsletter below
Like Uber, which acquired ebike company Jump in April, Lyft sees bikeshare as a natural extension of its wider ambition to improve access to transportation in an affordable and sustainable way.
Uber has said it wants to eliminate the need for people to own a car and bring multiple transportation modes within its app.
In a blog post Lyft says: “The benefits of bikeshare are evident: It’s healthier. It can be faster. And it’s better for our planet. Yet we’ve only started to scratch the surface of what’s possible in shifting as a society from car trips to bike trips.”
It also lays out its approach to bikes and scooters which it says is based on four principles:
- Affordable transportation for historically underserved communities.
- Making streets safer through Vision Zero, a campaign that began in Sweden and aims to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries from traffic accidents.
- Making it easier to connect bike and scooter users to transit.
- Helping eliminate unnecessary car trips.
Lyft has a goal of removing a million cars from the road by the end of 2019 through its bike schemes.
The company’s co-founder and president John Zimmer says: “Today, Lyft takes a large step forward in our vision to provide a more sustainable transportation experience that will bring together all your favorite ways of getting around into one unified Lyft app.”