Lyft’s Approach To Bikes & Scooters:
Accelerating Public + Private Mobility
By John Zimmer & Logan Green, Lyft Co-founders
Improving people’s lives with the world’s best transportation isn’t just Lyft’s mission: we consider it our life’s work. Together with our team, we’ve been on this path for one clear reason — transportation is a critical source of economic and social mobility, but car ownership is failing our communities. This is why we founded Lyft, and why three years ago John stood onstage at the LA Auto Show and called for the end of car ownership.
We have been committed to this cause for over a decade, and the pace of change continues to increase. Just last year, 250,000 Lyft passengers gave up their cars.
Today, we’re excited to outline our approach to partnering with cities to introduce bike and scooter sharing to the Lyft platform, an initiative that will accelerate our shared progress.
Lyft’s work with bikes and scooters is being guided by four key tenets:
1. Transportation Equity
2. Safer Streets
3. Transit Integration
4. Environmental Sustainability
Today we are putting a stake in the ground for each of these tenets:
We will invest $1M alongside local non-profits to bring transportation equity to underserved neighborhoods.
Lyft Bikes and Scooters will be our most affordable transportation options, and will extend mobility to communities that have historically been underserved. We will work alongside leading local non-profits and community groups across the country like TransForm. Together we will develop income eligible programs and community outreach to ensure transportation access and affordability to those who need it most.
This commitment follows our expanded Lyft Relief Rides program with United Way, which will also benefit from these added modes. We know that one ride can make a big difference in someone’s life. Since launching the partnership earlier this month, United Way has shared numerous stories from families that have utilized the program to access job interviews that otherwise would not have been available to them.
We will make it easy for passengers to use bikes and scooters to connect to transit.
Our bike and scooter integration is being built from the ground up to encourage transit and support our goal of reaching 50% shared rides. This launch is perfectly aligned with our new multi-modal features that are being brought to Lyft as part of our recent redesign.
The Lyft app will be unique in its emphasis and ability to bridge the first and last-mile gap. Soon you will be able to get real-time transit information, plan a multi-modal trip, and use Lyft Bikes and Scooters to connect to a local transit stop or shared ride pickup location.
Transit, bikes, small electric vehicles, and infrastructure such as safe pedestrian paths and bike lanes, all play a large role in decoupling people’s right to mobility from car ownership. We know we can’t accomplish this alone, and we’re committed to working with cities and residents to bring these elements together in the most cohesive way to maximize a reduction in vehicle miles traveled.
We are committed to making Vision Zero a reality.
Lyft is in a unique position to drive positive change, and we’ve never taken that responsibility lightly. In order to best serve our passengers, drivers and broader communities, it is our responsibility to ensure safer streets.
Across the nation, under the banner of Vision Zero, advocates, Mayors and victims of preventable traffic violence have united to take action. We will partner with those individuals and their cities to provide capital and technology solutions that expand protected bike lanes and reduce speeding. We will grow our partnerships with organizations like Together For Safer Roads, that stand beside local bike and pedestrian advocates to help protect our community members.
The Lyft community will take 1 million cars off the road by the end of 2019.
In 2017, 250,000 Lyft community members gave up their personal cars. This shift, in addition to Lyft’s carbon neutral initiative, in which all emissions from Lyft rides are offset, is already having a meaningful impact in our communities. By promoting bikes, scooters and transit for the right trips, we will increase the pace of this trend and further the reduction of personal car ownership.
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the private and public sectors to work together to make our cities designed for people not cars. We see the introduction of bikes and scooters to our cities’ shared transit ecosystems as one more step in Lyft’s civic responsibility.
