Bluebikes Bikeshare Governance Study
Cambridge, MA
Project Summary
The Boston metro region is home to Bluebikes, one of the nation’s longest-running bikeshare systems. Part of the system’s success comes from steady regional growth, expanding from an initial service area covering just Boston to now encompassing 13 municipalities. That expansion, however, has come with growing pains. Bluebikes is run through a complex governance structure, with individual contracts between each municipality and the operator, as well as a memorandum of agreement overseeing roles and responsibilities across all 13 municipalities, a regional planning agency, and the private operator. The City of Cambridge hired Toole Design to learn how other municipalities manage Bluebikes internally and to research alternative governance models that could improve future processes.
Expertise Applied
Learning from Municipal Partners and Peers
Toole Design interviewed and surveyed 10 participating municipalities and the regional planning commission to understand their experiences with managing the Bluebikes bikeshare system. From this outreach, our team identified key themes around current operations and insights for improving regional coordination and procurement in the future. For example, municipalities generally agreed that local planning staff should continue to play a key role in bikeshare station siting decisions. There was also a general desire for improved regional coordination around system-wide support, such as data collection and analysis, strategic bikeshare expansion planning, and grant funding.
Our team also reviewed 10 peer bikeshare systems across the United States to understand the various business models and how they are governed, funded, and managed.
The final deliverable outlined three alternative governance options for Bluebikes to consider in future contract updates: nonprofit operations, private ownership and operations, and a regional authority-led approach. A key tradeoff identified in this analysis was the importance of public investment to retain control over equity programs and ensure affordable pricing. The City of Cambridge will use this analysis, in partnership with the other participating municipalities within the Bluebikes system, as it makes future refinements to its governance and business models.