Transit now aggregates dockless bikeshare

There’s a bonanza sweeping the USA. A two-wheeled bonanza. A bikesharing bonanza. In cities across the nation, commuters are flocking to bikeshare. But it’s not just ridership that’s growing like gangbusters — so are the number of bikesharing companies.

Within the last few months, certain American cities (like Seattle and Washington, DC) have welcomed a new form of bikesharing into their cities: dockless bikeshare. City centres are now suddenly awash with thousands of bikesharing bikes — all owned by different companies, and all requiring different apps to locate and pay for them.

Which means it’s practically impossible to find the bikeshare that’s actually closest to you… unless you go back and forth between each company’s bikesharing app, comparing distances. 📏🚴‍📏

Enter Transit.

We’re now integrating dockless bikes in our app — starting in Seattle and DC. Both docked and dockless bikes appear together on our map.

• Seattle 👉 Ofo, SPIN, and Limebike.
• DC 👉 Capital Bikeshare, JUMP, Mobike, Spin, and LimeBike.

What about trip planning? Our bikesharing trip planner finds the optimal route for each journey (including bike paths, where possible) and compares ETAs against other options. Not just between bikesharing services — but against public transit and ridehail as well.

It’s the first trip planner to support dockless bikeshare in North America.

It’s all part of our effort to promote bikeshare to the the hundreds of thousands of people in Seattle and DC who use Transit. We have custom promo pages for each service — teaching our users what dockless bikeshare is, who provides it, distinctions between each one, with pricing info and discounts too.

Why Seattle and DC?

We’re launching dockless in Seattle and DC for a few reasons. For one, Seattle and DC have more bikesharing systems than any other North American city. There is an obvious need to show every service, all in one place. For two, Seattle and DC have tons of Transit users — we can make a big impact here.

Most importantly? Seattle and DC have welcomed dockless bikeshare with open arms. We’re proud of our relationships with cities, transit agencies, and existing bikeshare systems. So while we believe new dockless bikes can seriously improve mobility… we also won’t support rogue bikeshare systems that cities deem illegal.

Why this matters

When you have an easy way of accessing nearby transport options, those options become more enticing. When you know exactly when your bus is coming (or exactly where you can find a bike) you eliminate the anxiety associated with those modes.

Docked bikeshare companies have always understood this, which is why they’ve been radically transparent with their data. One of the most impactful things they share is GBFS, an open data format that contains real-time availability of bikes & docks (among other information).

To date Transit has integrated ~75 bikeshare systems. GBFS data makes the process seamless.

North American dockless systems have yet to release their data in GBFS — so for now, we have to use the data source from each respective app.

What this means for cities

As we make bikeshare more accessible, we inch closer to accomplishing our mission: getting you from a-to-b without your own car.

Docked or dockless — we want to bring bikeshare to the masses.

So hop in the saddle already. We’ll find you the closest bike 😉

Wanna partner? Get in touch. Wanna ride? Download Transit. Wanna spend some more time reading these posts? Boy, do we gotchyu.

👏 Clap it up for bikeshare, folks! 👏