L<\/span>yft<\/strong> is getting into the bikeshare business, announcing Monday it has acquired the nation\u2019s largest bikeshare operator, Motivate.<\/p>\n

The ride-hailing company acquired Motivate, the operator of Capital Bikeshare and New York\u2019s Citi Bike, among other bikeshare services, in a deal believed to be valued at least $250 million. The company will introduce \u201cLyft Bikes,\u201d seizing on the momentum around dockless and pedal-assist e-bikes in major U.S. cities and inject resources into the bikeshare operator to expand those offerings around the country.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear where Lyft planned to launch those services; the company declined to comment Monday on the details of any product rollouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cLyft and Motivate have both been committed for years to the same goal of reducing the need for personal car ownership by providing reliable and affordable ways to move around our cities,\u201d Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer said in a statement. \u201cBringing together Lyft and Motivate will accelerate our collaboration with cities and deliver even better experiences to our passengers and riders.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It also was unclear how the Lyft deal would affect Motivate-operated Capital Bikeshare. The District Department of Transportation said Monday afternoon it would be premature to comment on the agreement, but officials \u201clook forward to the continued expansion of Capital Bikeshare, one of the nation\u2019s oldest and most successful bikeshare systems.\u201d The agency did not say whether the agreement could impact Capital Bikeshare\u2019s branding or whether it will retain Motivate \u2014 now Lyft Bikes \u2014 as the operator.<\/p>\n

Ride-hailing companies have indicated they want to make their apps one-stop shops for mobility, enabling users to select a destination and use the appropriate mode of transportation \u2014 whether solo or pooled ride, bike or scooter \u2014 to get there.<\/p>\n

Lyft hinted it wants to offer a service similar to Jump Mobility, the e-bike company acquired this spring by Uber.\u00a0Lyft said it wants to grow existing markets and \u201cwork with cities on delivering innovation, including providing dockless and pedal-assist electric bikes to riders around the country,\u201d according to a news release on its Motivate acquisition.<\/p>\n

In contrast to dockless bike-share and scooter services such as Lime, Bird and Spin, Motivate operates fixed-dock services that are fueling the rise of bike sharing around the country. Since launching with 100 stations and just over 1,000 bikes in 2010, Capital Bikeshare has surged in popularity, growing to 4,300 bikes and 500 stations in less than a decade.<\/p>\n

The purchase does not include Motivate\u2019s bike maintenance and service division, a\u00a0unionized workforce,<\/a>\u00a0which will remain a separate division. Lyft says it inherits Motivate\u2019s corporate and technology divisions and the city contracts that fuel branding agreements such as New York\u2019s Citi Bike, San Francisco\u2019s Ford GoBike and Portland\u2019s Nike-sponsored \u201cBiketown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lyft says existing sponsorship\u00a0agreements will remain in place in the short-term.<\/p>\n

Capital Bikeshare is different from other cities\u2019 systems because it does not have a named sponsor. The sponsorship agreements are worth millions in annual revenue in some cases and make up a significant chunk of the revenue derived from bikeshare services. While ride-hailing companies might have an interest in rebranding the bikes under their own corporate logos, it could be a tricky prospect because cities have existing contracts with corporate sponsors. Citi Bike\u2019s May\u00a02018 operating report<\/a>\u00a0said it brought in $6.5 million in revenue \u2014 $4.7 million in membership and other fees and $1.8 million in sponsorship money.<\/p>\n

Citi\u00a0paid $41 million<\/a>\u00a0to be the corporate sponsor for New York\u2019s bikeshare system beginning in 2012.<\/p>\n

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• Read the original article on Washington Post<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

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  Lyft has acquired Motivate, the operator of Capital Bikeshare, the company announced Monday. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post) Lyft is getting into the bikeshare business, announcing Monday it has acquired the nation\u2019s largest bikeshare operator, Motivate. The ride-hailing company acquired Motivate, the operator of Capital Bikeshare and New York\u2019s Citi Bike, among other bikeshare…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[96,2,1,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11627"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11631,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11627\/revisions\/11631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}