I’ve watched the ebbing fortunes of the ‘bike share unicorns’ - notably ofo and Mobike - with concern over the past year. Their cheery growth, rapidly scattering thousands of orange and yellow bikes across UK cities seemed like a magic solution to get more people cycling without costing cities a fortune. But their equally rapid retraction holds lessons for all sorts of new mobility.
There are two elements that I think are incredibly important - timescales and narratives. They are interconnected - after all, we need time to develop narratives - and they transfer to other forms of new mobility.
Time scale
Part of the pressure on ofo and Mobike has been to turn a profit as three or four year old companies. Whilst in the world of existing business models this may not seem onerous, they are demanding radically different behaviour of consumers and cities on several different levels. These kind of changes - whilst they may be desirable - are not amenable to quick wins. To put the pressure on flexible bike share operators into context, Uber is about ten years old and is still not profitable despite its popularity and seemingly embedded ubiquitous nature.
Changes in transport behaviour do not happen over night, making them profitable takes longer.
Free range transport
Dockless or flexible bike share provides ‘autonomous’ - self-discovered, self-booked and self-pedaled - transport freely available 'in the wild' without visible infrastructure. There are no stands telling people how to use dockless bikes, no information kiosks or ticket offices, stations or staff. All explanations, finding bikes, booking and payment is mediated by an app.
Use requires that people understand that they are transport - and have the technology and banking facilities to book and pay for them. Regular use requires that they are reliable enough to develop an ongoing role in people’s travel routines. However the customer relationship is not the only relationship they have to foster. Dockless bike share companies need cities to accept that they be allowed to use public space. And they need to be accepted by people in general as belonging to the fabric of society - and neither appropriated for personal use only nor damaged (deliberately or otherwise).
Each of these elements is a factor in profitability - and the ongoing presence of free floating bike share in the UK.
The development of narrative
By way of contrast, last summer I visited Cardiff to analyse why the bike share scheme was an instant success. The Cardiff bike share is a station based scheme run by Nextbike. Having analysed the network and found that it wasn’t significantly different from other less successful Nextbike schemes, I looked at other factors.
It was interesting to contrast the media narrative around the launch of the Cardiff scheme with that of Mobike in Manchester.
Whilst there was a series of stories about the process leading up to the launch of the Cardiff scheme (starting over a year before its launch), the narrative around Mobike was of an instant arrival.
Following the fanfare around the launch the tone rapidly became negative and the scheme was not able to turn this around for the rest of its time before withdrawal a year after launch. In contrast, the long build up around the Cardiff scheme emphasised that it was the work of several established and credible partners, and keyed into existing infrastructure and travel patterns.
Talking to these partners it became clear that the communication strategies were devised for the long term with services that are already on the ground (including the police). The tone of media stories about the scheme is different and the social media is supportive.
Whilst every city is unique, I was struck by the contrast and the lessons that may be drawn for future schemes.
Comparing a docked and dockless scheme is difficult - the docks themselves provide additional 'story boards' that contribute to the narrative around the schemes. However, it made me wonder. Could a different story develop around flexible bike share?
Whilst I believe there is much more research we need to do, I do think that studying the use and acceptance of free-floating bicycles is essential before we think about how to introduce other free floating vehicles - whether they are other micro-vehicles or cars or buses.
If you would like to read the full report on Nextbike in Cardiff, download it here. There is also an excellent study of Mobike in Manchester published by the University of Salford.