Electric bike share off to a great start in San Francisco
We’re excited.
We’re excited to have brought JUMP’s dockless electric bikes to San Francisco, we’re excited by the feedback from thousands of new riders, and we’re excited by the impact on transportation we’re seeing since launch.
Here’s a recap of February, our first full month in SF, along with our thoughts on how things have gone so far.
Given we launched in the metrics-obsessed tech capital of the world, let’s talk about JUMP SF’s main KPIs; Average Distance Per Trip, Trips Per Bike Per Day, and Parking Satisfaction.
Average Distance Per Trip (The Game Changer KPI)
One of the main ways to measure the impact of e-bikes on transportation is understanding the average distance travelled during each ride — which for JUMP is 2.7 miles.
For context, a regular non-e-bike share trip is less than 1 mile while the average ride-hail trip, such as Uber or Lyft, is known to be approximately 5 miles. To fall right in the middle of the two of these numbers proves that e-bikes bridge the gap between bikes and cars.
Being able to go farther with each ride also provides two tangible benefits:
- Connect more parts of the city. Over 40% of JUMP rides start or end in what San Francisco designates as a Community of Concern. We started our SF operations in Bayview and we’re excited that e-bikes are proving to be a solution Bayview and neighborhoods just like it where new transportation options often showed up long after downtown counterparts.
- Shorten commutes. With e-assist providing a boost up to 20mph it’s obvious that e-bikes are faster than regular bikes. However, in cities like SF where cars travel at a pace of 12mph, riding a JUMP bike to and from work is often faster than driving and also cheaper than hailing a car. Check out Twitter where a number of users have shared their commute comparisons.
Trips Per Bike Per Day (The Reality Check KPI)
Analyzing the utilization of each bike by tracking trips per bike per day (t/b/d) helps explain three aspects of a successful bike share: satisfaction (do people like it?), fleet size (do we need more bikes?), and revenue (are we building a sustainable business?).
In February, JUMP averaged 4 trips per bike per day in San Francisco. Again, we’re excited because mature bike share systems average ~2 t/b/d and many dockless newcomers over-saturate a market and see <1 t/b/d.
We expect that 4 t/b/d is just the beginning for JUMP. In fact, we’ve had a number of days above 5 as well.
In the short term, we’ll learn each city we operate in and improve bike distribution by adjusting for past usage, geography, time-of-day, and other factors that all impact this number.
In the long term, we believe that car ownership will decrease, biking infrastructure will improve, and the technology for e-bikes will continue to advance. All these factors combined will allow biking to capture a larger piece of the transportation pie than it owns today.
Parking Satisfaction (The Thoughtful KPI)
There’s a fundamental difference in the design of JUMP bikes compared to our competitors. Most noticeable is the integrated electric motor on all of our bikes today. Spend more time with a JUMP bike and you’ll notice a full-size frame, higher quality parts, tamper-proof brake lines, and of course the useful basket design.
However, it’s the integrated U-bar that provides the greatest benefits to riders and residents of JUMP cities.
JUMP trips receive over 99.5% parking satisfaction.
JUMP trips receive over 99.5% parking satisfaction – meaning that less than .5% of all trips taken with JUMP result in a parking complaint. A number that’s only possible because of the integrated lock on each bike. JUMP’s U-bar keeps city sidewalks, roadways, and even private property free of the #bikelitter caused by self-locking dockless bikes.
Measuring parking satisfaction lets us know that our experience launching the first dockless bike share in the US in 2013 and bringing the first electric fleet 5 years later is paying off.
The road ahead is looking great.
