Uber’s electric bike fleet has landed in Dallas. The candy apple-red Jump bikes are now in Uptown and downtown, along with the company’s similarly branded scooters. Late last year, Uber filed an application with the city to place 2,000 e-bikes on its streets as well as 2,000 scooters. Keep your eye out on the sidewalks.
They’re pedal-assisted, meaning you still have to use your legs, but the motor will work harder—all the way up until the 20 mph mark. City officials hope that’s speedy enough to embolden users to actually ride in the streets. For now, it’s free to unlock and then it costs 15 cents per minute. Each bike goes about 20 miles on a single charge, and they’re built to accommodate riders from 4’11” to 6’6”’, according to this WIRED feature. You can leave the bike wherever you’d like within the system area, but leaving it outside of it results in a $25 fee. There are still some kinks: Dallas’ web page currently has Atlanta’s map, so it’s not exactly clear where the system area is. Chances are it’s most of the city’s core, and probably not Highland Park.
Update 1/16/19: Looks like Jump fixed the website. The system area is huge: the southern boundary is Illinois Ave., in South Oak Cliff, and the northern and eastern boundary is LBJ Freeway. It extends west almost to Farmer’s Branch.
Today, the company also dropped bikes and scooters in Scottsdale, Mesa, San Antonio, and Atlanta. Those launches look a lot like Dallas’: 2,000 of each in San Antonio and Atlanta, 1,000 of each in both Arizona cities. In October, when Uber spent $200 million buying the company, there were just 4,000 bikes in 13 cities. They grow up so fast. And this probably won’t be the last e-bike entrant. Lyft acquired the bike-share operator Motivate, the nation’s largest, that runs bike shares in New York (CitiBike), Washington D.C. (Capital Bikeshare), and in the Bay Area (Ford GoBike). Lyft hasn’t exactly stayed away from Uber’s territory.
