The city’s proposal for a bike sharing program may be that much closer to reality now that Uber has bought the Fort Greene start up company, Jump.
Jump, a New York City startup that was founded in 2017, focuses on pedal-assist-electric and dockless bikes. This week, the car-hailing service Uber, reportedly paid a whopping $200 million to acquire the company.
Jump, which differs from companies like Citibike because of it’s dockless share system, claims to be the first of its kind in New York and according to head of the company, Ryan Rzepecki, offers better and more accessible transit options for urban dwellers than its competitors. The sale will allow “a lot more of our resources to go toward bikes, expansion, and scaling our vision globally,” said Rzepecki.
The sale of the start up will allow commuters to rent one of its bicycles using the Uber app. This will allow users to see available car and bike hailing options so they can choose the best way to get from one place to another. The bikes will be still branded with the Jump name, but you would be able to take a bike at one location and drop it off at another using the Uber app.
Jump’s bikes come in two styles — a standard human-powered bicycle, and a pedal-assist-electric model, which is equipped with a battery that cyclists activate when they need a little extra power to help propel them through traffic.
“My goal with this is to make cycling extremely accessible to people who normally wouldn’t consider biking. We made the first-ever dockless bikes, which lowered costs to launch the project, and improved the user experience,” Rzepecki said.
The implementation of a bike sharing company like Jump would bring New York City up to standards of cities like San Francisco and Washington D.C. where these services have been available for a few years.
Featured image: jumpbikes.com