Lyft To Introduce Bike Rentals In Washington DC

Lyft is known for its ride-sharing app, but it has expanded its business to car renting as well as transportation to and also from events. Lyft is currently updating the app so that the bike-renting service will soon appear in Washing DC via Capital Bikeshare. The city will be the next in line after San Francisco and New York to provide both cars and bikes rentals from one app.

Last year, Lyft acquired Ford GoBike and Motivate, part of an aggressive push toward the bike-sharing market. However, problems are inevitable; for example, the brakes that caused 1,000 electric bikes to be recalled in April.

The services of Capital Bikeshare offers bike rentals for short trips with the number of 4,300 bikes when the trips happen within over 500 locations in Washing DC. Falls Church was the latest to be included in this program of bike sharing.

The new app updated by Lyft will make Washing DC be the first city in the world in which people can get public transit directions, rideshare, bicycle, and scooter all in one app. Lyft has plans of integrating public transit’s information about transit options including Alexandria DASH, Prince George's The Bus, the Fairfax Connector, the DC Circulator, and WMATA.

In densely populated cities, residents do not always need or want a car. Therefore, it makes sense to offer bicycles as a healthy and sustainable alternative. However, the market for bike sharing has already been crowded and problematic. There have been concerns about people abandoning bikes on the street, novice bikers’ safety on the road and docks taking up spaces.