Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

It's a Canadian based dockless bike share company that the cities and region are attempting to finalize an agreement with to do an 18 month pilot of bikesharing in the region.

https://www.dropbike.co/

Thanks for the link, I probably should have just googled it in the first place.  Really interesting though.

Doesn't it seem like we've tried a number of different bike share platforms?  Any reason on the constant change?

That number isn't that high, this is only the second.

(Disclaimer, this is my understanding only, I have no inside information, just a lot of familiarity) Some context, CAB (Community Access Bikeshare) was started by the Working Centre, and was aiming to provide bike sharing for individuals who are traditionally underserved, they operated at a substantial loss for a while, and never developed the scale to be really successful.

Another bikeshare tried to start a few years back, Grand River Bike Share, they had ambitious plans, but never got funding to go beyond the theoretical situation.  Last year (or the year before) some of the cities got funding from the upper governments to do a feasibility study for bike share in the region (I know, more studies ugh).

Simultaneously, dropbike expressed interest in launching in KW for zero cost to the cities (well, besides land), which also coincided with the shutdown of CAB. The cities are now trying to sign an agreement with dropbike for a launch here as a pilot on an interim basis, partially to inform the feasibility study.

So drop bike would be the second launch, but not guaranteed to be the final one.

As I understand there has been a fair bit of negotiation with dropbike, initially they only wanted to launch in Waterloo, but they were pushed to expand to all cities in the region (with a special provision that Cambridge not be a token launch).  They are now haggling over insurance and indemnification.