“Never Get Dockblocked”
A conversation with Nelle Pierson of JUMP Mobility
JUMP is an electric dockless bikeshare option coming out of Social Bicycles, a San Francisco-based company that got into the smart bike industry in 2011. They’re currently halfway through the DC dockless bikeshare pilot program, which ends in April.
A little while back, we sat down with Nelle Pierson to talk about JUMP bikes, what makes DC a perfect petri dish for the dockless bikeshare movement and how to get more folks out riding.
It’s the best testing ground we could possibly have — challenging topography, bike infrastructure, people who understand the concept of bikeshare already — and we have a lot of people who need better ways to get around.
Pierson’s got a deep history with the cycling community. Before joining JUMP, Pierson worked as outreach coordinator with Washington Area Bicycling Association (WABA).
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
730DC: Tell us a little bit about the DC cycling community and your background in it
Nelle Pierson: I moved out to DC a week after I graduated from college. This city has changed so quickly and I feel like I jumped in right as things started to explode.
WABA and passionate politicians, like Gabe Klein and the Fenty administration, can take most of the credit for bikeshare and protected bike lanes here.
I started working for WABA doing their outreach and organizing work. People realized that in order for us to change streets and change neighborhoods we had to have the right people at the table — and that’s largely our underrepresented communities. People with resources to show up at meetings and advocate are not always the best representatives of biking. A few of the results there were the Women & Bicycles program, Ward 7 and 8 outreach, a Spanish-speaking outreach program.
The research shows that we have to drastically alter the ways we move around because cities are just going to get more populated and climate change is just going to get worse. Biking can be so transformative on the personal level and on the neighborhood level and within friend groups. There are so many concentric circles of how biking can bring benefits to us.
730DC: You mentioned that some DC politicians were instrumental in bringing about bikeshare to begin with. Why DC? Why is DC the right place for this bikeshare pilot?
NP: The Fenty administration gets the most credit — they started with the SmartBike system back in 2008. And that was 120 little bicycles at stations maybe in 5 spots. The city realized quickly realized it needed to be a lot more robust in order to work. In order for bikeshare to work there has to be saturation of bikes. You have to be able to walk within 20 minutes otherwise it’s not reasonable.
Harriet Trugoning, the director of the office of planning, Gabe Kline, who was the director for the district department of transportation, and WABA were instrumental forces at a time when this solution appeared. And in 2010 we got Capital Bikeshare.
A city has to have a base network of bike lanes. They have to have the start to a healthy bike environment, otherwise people aren’t going to do it. At the time we had about 50 miles of bike lanes. It was just the start.
We need a better bike network, and that gets out more people, and more people demand more infrastructure policy and then that gets out more people — and it’s this beautiful virtuous cycle.
730DC: A lot of what you’ve done has been around getting more people on bikes in DC. What do you see as JUMP’s role in expanding the biking community? Is it meant for new bikers, is it meant for the typical affluent white male user of bikeshare?
NP: In the last 5 years, the bike mode-share in this region has increased by 54%. It’s unbelievable. We’ve gotten to a place where 46% of commuters in DC are female-identifying.
In Mt. Pleasant for example, 20% of the residents are using bikes as their primary mode of transportation. That’s like Amsterdam level. That’s the metric that we should all be striving for.
That speaks to the power of JUMP and what we can offer DC. The people who are commuting are those who are most likely to have the resources and time and confidence and skills to get out biking. They’re the people who’ve already figured out their routine and have the physical ability and, based on their privilege, are geographically within 2 miles of work. But there’s a vast part of the population that is untapped. 60% of people say they are interested in biking, but they don’t feel safe biking — JUMP taps into that market and provides an option that’s a lot easier and it’s cheap. We know that people are buying e-bikes at a faster rate than mopeds for the first time in history.
That’s like Amsterdam level. That’s the metric that we should all be striving for.
The equity piece is important for us. Our current bikeshare system is determined based on stations. Dockless bikes democratize where the bikes go. We have the power to distribute bikes where we think they should go. It’s a combination.
Based on the permit, we’re required to have bikes spread through all 8 wards. We’re really trying to distribute them in locations that are tough geographically in terms of the topography and hills and to increase usage in low-income neighborhoods. It’s pretty cool to see where our bikes go. One of the constraints right now with stationed bikeshare is it’s really expensive for the city to pay for as many stations as it needs. The city doesn’t pay for dockless bikes, which means that we can provide more bikes and we can provide a more reliable service. With our bikes, you never get dockblocked.
730DC: A lot of modesharing companies offer last mile solutions, essentially doing the work a city can’t do because they don’t have the money to invest in its residents needs. How do you see the relationship between JUMP and the city? Is there tension there?
NP: This tension has always existed and it’s a healthy tension. The streetcar system in DC was a private company. Many of our transportation options in the past have been privatized. It’s cyclical, based on public investment.
The ability of a private company like ours to support those who don’t have access to transit options means that we can serve as a buffer and a conduit in the short-run. Over time as cities continue to invest in metro and bus lines, etc., the systems support one another. We see it as mutually beneficial.
Because we are in a well-developed area that’s really spread out. So if we can continue to support the inner core and expand as the city continues to invest, it means that more and more people are getting better transportation options.
It will be interesting to see what happens with dockless in our region beyond the District. Will dockless become a seamless system throughout the greater region? We don’t know but hopefully that means that the first and last-mile solution continues to help out more people.
At the end of the day, if we’re getting more people on bikes then everybody is winning. If we’re getting one less person out of a car, then everybody is winning.
730DC: We’re in a 6-month pilot period, which runs through April. What happens next?
NP: DC is such a great place for us to run this pilot.
It’s the best testing ground we could possibly have — challenging topography, bike infrastructure, people who understand the concept of bikeshare already — and we have a lot of people who need better ways to get around.
Over the next few months, we need to test and test and test and perfect what we’re doing.
We’ve invested in a local team and a local staff who really care. We aren’t competing against other companies, we’re competing against single-occupancy vehicles. We are grateful that we can invest as much as we can into this pilot in DC to master it. Once we’ve got this model, the opportunities are endless. We are collaborators and urban planners, we care about making this work in the long-run. We care deeply about vibrancy and people of cities. I’m so in awe of our team and the vision that we have. We want to change the world, that’s it.
