B-Cycle Bike Sharing Program Ends, City Plans To Improve 'Micromobility'

DENVER (CBS4) - The city of Denver ended its B-cycle program on Thursday, and city leaders are now looking forward to the next phase of what they call "micromobility" in the city. They want to develop a program that includes multiple modes of transportation including using e-bikes or electric scooters, and they say it would all be featured on the same app.

They also wish to make such a system one that's affordable for people who live and work in Denver.

"It has to include every neighborhood in Denver. We need to go big. We need to be ambitious and we need to see these services across the entire city," said Danny Katz, a member of the Denver Streets Partnership and the director of CoPIRG.

Since the B-cycle launch in 2010, more than 5 million miles were covered with those familiar red bikes. John Hickenlooper was mayor at the time of the launch, and he and other city leaders hoped the program would encourage Denverites to use their cars less. The city found multiple options to finance the program throughout the 2010s, but ridership decreased over the last few years.

"Technology has advanced in this industry very greatly so there's not the need for a lot of bulky and very expensive infrastructure anymore," said Mike Pletsch of the group Denver Bike Sharing.