Dockless in Dallas

At the height of the dockless bike craze a couple of years ago, the streets of Dallas were filled with 18,000 of the rental bicycles, making that city the center of a fast-growing trend in the United States. The bike rental companies, flush with venture capital money, saw Dallas as a testing ground for a new mobility option. Dallas officials encouraged deployment of the bikes by choosing not to regulate them when they were first introduced. They imposed rules only after residents complained about the proliferation of bikes and all the inconvenient places people were leaving them.

Now, though, the dockless bike services are all gone. Uber, which operates the e-bike service Jump, announced in June it would be leaving Dallas, giving few details about its rationale even as it continued to offer Jump bikes in other places. Uber had been the last dockless bike operator in the city. The company said it would continue to offer scooters for Dallas residents who wanted them.

The demise of dockless bikes in Dallas is a mixed bag for cycling advocates there. While all the companies eventually withdrew, they demonstrated a pent-up demand for cycling and other alternative forms of mobility and exposed the city’s lack of infrastructure capable of handling new modes of transportation.

More