Nice Ride Minnesota’s goal has always been to share bikes. The Minneapolis-based nonprofit has received millions from the federal government to build bike docks across the Twin Cities.
And for the past several months, they’ve been working on a new, “dockless” bike system that would add thousands of publicly shared, free-floating bikes, for a price. They’ve asked for proposals from private companies to not only contract with them but take care of their employees and existing business — in exchange for “exclusive” rights to bike-sharing services across the Twin Cities.
That effort ran into a wall last week, with St. Paul pulling out of the process.
At the heart of the issue is whether a non-governmental entity, like Nice Ride, can put out a proposal request on a city’s behalf. Not only that, but hand out exclusive rights for a city service as a financial lure.
“St. Paul’s never done anything like that, allowed another company to speak for them like that,” said Kathy Lantry, who heads St. Paul’s Public Works Department.
Bill Dossett, Nice Ride’s executive director, countered that the process has been public.
“We have a bike-share system that’s been working pretty great,” Dossett said. “We also know you can lose these systems.”
On Tuesday, a 34-member panel put together by Nice Ride — including biking advocates, three Nice Ride employees and representatives from both cities (who were invited but, in the end, didn’t vote) — picked Brooklyn-based Motivate out of the proposal’s two finalists.
Still, nothing has been set in stone.
Cities still have to sign off on the pick. St. Paul won’t, and Minneapolis says it’s still deciding. St. Paul, though, could still reach a solution that meshes with whatever the city across the river decides.
HOW BIKE SYSTEMS COMPARE
In August, Nice Ride issued a request for companies wanting to contract for exclusive bike “ride sharing” rights in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.
A couple of other jurisdictions — the University of Minnesota, and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, which separately governs that city’s park system — also were included.
Nice Ride has a docked system — 200 stations housing 1,850 bikes.
But it sees a new trend on the horizon: dockless systems — in essence, bikes that instead have a permanently fixed lock on their tire, which would disengage with a payment. They could be left anywhere — preferably on city bike racks — and located by another potential rider through GPS tracking, via an app.
It’s a lot cheaper. Those current docking stations, normally housing 7 to 15 bikes, cost about $50,000 apiece. Nice Ride spends half its $1.4 million annual budget maintaining all that — and estimates a significant cost drop under a dockless system.
Representatives from both cities credited Nice Ride for approaching the fledgling technology proactively.
ST. PAUL RAISES CONCERNS
But St. Paul had a big problem with the process.
“The issue really is Nice Ride, as an entity, has no standing to do an RFP (request for proposal) on behalf of St. Paul,” said city council member Russ Stark. Particularly one giving exclusive rights.
Both Stark and Lantry said that by the time St. Paul was involved, the proposal request had already been issued — without their input on how it should be worded.
Minneapolis’ situation is different. Unlike St. Paul, it has an existing contract with Nice Ride to be the provider of its bike-share services. And, Dossett notes, it serves as Nice Ride’s fiscal agent.
But whether being “the” provider means being the “sole, exclusive” provider is something that the city’s attorneys are looking at.
“We are still reviewing (the contract), to be certain of implications,” said Robin Hutcheson, head of Minneapolis’ Public Works Department.
COMPARING PROPOSALS
Nice Ride’s proposal request was heavily tied to its current “docked-bike” business: asking applicants how they would “maintain (Nice Ride’s) existing bike share system for its useful life,” and “seamlessly” allow customers to use both docked and dockless bikes.
Motivate — the company that was picked — scored significantly higher in questions relating to how it would deal with Nice Ride’s infrastructure, compared with its lone finalist competitor, LimeBike, a recent West Coast startup.
Panelists also weighed how the companies would spread the bikes to less active areas, maintain them and clean up any clutter on city streets, and offer quality bikes with good customer service.
Though LimeBike deals exclusively in dockless systems — and Motivate has yet to start a pilot for one — LimeBike only led in a single category: its ability to “dramatically increase” bicycle sharing in the Twin Cities.
The proposal request also asked that bidders absorb Nice Ride’s employees — with the exception of executive director Dossett.
BIKE ADVOCATES TAKE NOTE
The situation has raised eyebrows among some St. Paul bike advocates.
“My thing is, I support Nice Ride as a member. I get that they’re in a tough spot. But as a citizen of St. Paul, that’s not my problem,” said Kate Lockhart, a St. Paul resident who is an avid cyclist and who wrote an column on streets.mn on the topic.
Added St. Paul Bicycle Coalition head Ethan Osten, “I think both St. Paul and Nice Ride found themselves in a difficult position. But Nice Ride has a known incentive that may or may not benefit St. Paul.”
Other advocates said Nice Ride may have had an apparent relationship with Motivate before the proposal request was even issued.
Dossett said that since its inception, Nice Ride had been working with a tech company — 8D Technologies, which designed all their hardware and software — that was bought and absorbed by Motivate in February 2017.
Because of the relationship, Dossett said, “We have often been the first to get the technology.” But he said the relationship didn’t extend beyond that.
Ethan Fawley of Our Streets Minneapolis — formerly the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition — had no criticisms of Nice Ride’s RFP process. Fawley noted that city representatives and bike advocates sat on the panel of judges.
“I think the process was worked on in good faith,” Fawley said, pointing out that to see Nice Ride’s infrastructure fail would not benefit anyone, given the amount of federal money poured into it.
He added that while St. Paul got involved late, it was his understanding the city was invited to join in early.
‘HEY, WHAT ABOUT ST. PAUL?’
Lockhart, the St. Paul cyclist, remembers going to a kickoff event at a restaurant in Northeast Minneapolis, hosted by Our Streets in September.
With Fawley emceeing, Nice Ride executives presented a sample plan, put the word out about their RFP and asked for questions. A representative from the city of Minneapolis was there as well.
“They did this presentation, and not once did they say St. Paul. The very first question from the audience — not by me — was ‘Hey, what about St. Paul?’ It definitely felt like we were the red-headed stepchild,” Lockhart said.
A second presentation by Nice Ride — in which the two finalists were presented — was held the following month at Macalester College in St. Paul.
“That seemed, to me, to be a course correction,” Lockhart said.
SIGN OFF STILL NEEDED
Just because a finalist was picked doesn’t mean the process is over, Fawley noted.
Both the federal government and the four affected jurisdictions need to sign off on it. Those that don’t won’t be affected.
Still, only one judge representing any of the four jurisdictions — Steve Sanders, a representative from the University of Minnesota’s transportation department — submitted scores to judge the finalists’ proposals.
Sanders declined an interview request Wednesday.
When asked whether Minneapolis would sign off on the proposal, public works director Hutcheson said city officials “have some steps to go through before we can say with certainty.”
“I was very hopeful we’d come together, and still plan to work collaboratively with St. Paul,” Hutcheson added.
St. Paul officials say their decision doesn’t mean they won’t pick a system that still works across the river.
“We are still very much open to the possibility it will be a joint system; we’ll just be deciding our own process,” Stark said.
