The municipal owners of the Bluebikes bikesharing system have issued a request for proposals seeking companies who can operate the day-to-day operations of the system for the next five years.
The city governments of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and other participating cities own the physical components of the Bluebikes system – the bikes and their stations.
But a private company called Motivate, a subsidiary of Lyft, handles the day-to-day operations of the system. It maintains the Bluebikes app, collects rental fees, provides customer service, and conducts maintenance.
The system's existing contract with Motivate is about to expire, so the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), a regional planning organization, is helping the system's municipal owners negotiate a new contract.
On Thursday, MAPC published a 123-page request for proposals (RFP) document to initiate the search for a new operator.
According to the RFP, the new contract would take effect in April 2026 and run through April 1, 2031. It would also include an option to renew for up to two additional two-year terms, until April 1, 2035.
The RFP outlines five "primary goals" for the new contract:
- "a significant increase in the number of stations and bikes," including "potentially expanding the footprint of the overall system" to new municipalities
- an "excellent state of repair"
- "excellent customer services, and strong availability of bikes and docks"
- "a robust ridership base, including increases in both members and casual users, and significant growth in demographic groups that are currently underrepresented in the System’s membership base relative to the population as a whole"
- "a financially stable system that is not reliant on municipal funds" for day-to-day operations.
StreetsblogMASS attempted to reach out to Motivate this week to see if they're interested in submitting a bid for the new contract, but we didn't hear back from them.
Motivate operates some of the nation's biggest bikesharing systems, including Citibike in New York and Capital Bikeshare in Washington.
Another possible bidder is Bicycle Transit Systems, which operates a number of mid-sized systems in cities like Houston, Philadelphia, and Denver.
Bid documents project larger, denser network of stations
Most of the bidding package outlines mundane technical requirements and expectations, covering details that range from snow removal requirements around stations ("a minimum 48-inch clear, accessible path of travel around Equipment") to how quickly the operator responds to problems reported on social media (under 48 hours).
More interestingly, the document also offers a vision of what Bluebikes will look like in 5 years: a considerably larger system, with more stations and more e-bikes.
The current Bluebikes system consists of 516 stations, with roughly 738 e-bikes and 3,980 non-electric bikes.
The City of Boston is adding 80 new stations this year and, according to the RFP, expects to add another 64 stations before the end of the decade, with a proportional number of new bikes.
In Cambridge, whose universities generate a higher density of ridership per square mile, the city plans to add "a minimum of 41 new stations" to its existing network of 89 stations within the next 5 years. Cambridge is aiming to locate "stations within 1/8 mile of every resident or worker" in the city, according to the RFP.
Somerville and Brookline both plan to double their station numbers in the next five years (from 35 to 70 in Somerville's case, and from 14 stations to 30 in Brookline).
Other outlying cities and towns, which are generally more recent additions to the Bluebikes system and therefore have only a handful of stations, are also planning significant growth:
- Everett aims to grow from 16 to 26 stations, focusing some of that growth on the neighborhood near the Chelsea border where large new apartment buildings are under construction alongside new protected bike lanes;
- Chelsea plans to grow its number of stations from 6 currently to 16 by 2030;
- Revere plans to double its number of stations from 6 to 12 by 2027, and then add another 15 more for a total of 27 by 2030;
- Watertown plans to grow from 10 stations in 2025 to 19 stations by 2030;
- Salem plans to add another 5 stations to its existing 18, for 23 stations by 2030;
- Newton plans to grow from 14 existing stations to 34 by 2030;
- Medford plans to grow from 15 existing stations to 28 stations by 2030;
- and Malden plans to grow from 3 existing stations to 15 stations by 2030.
Potential contractors will have until the end of May to submit their bids. We expect to cover the selection process more in the year to come and will provide an update when a winning bidder is announced.
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