The popular regional bicycle sharing service in western Massachusetts has hit a bump in the road.
People looking to rent one of ValleyBike Share’s electric-assist bikes for a short trip to the store, office, or the bus stop are finding only empty docking stations as officials in the participating cities attempt to renegotiate a contract with the program’s vendor, Bewegen.
The Canadian company has initiated a bankruptcy reorganization procedure in its home country and is dissolving all its existing bike-share contracts around the world. Bewegen wants to continue to provide IT services for the online reservation and payment systems for the bike-sharing program, but will no longer do field work, said the company’s communications director Marie-Helene Houle.
“We just won’t do any more of the operations part, which is repair of the bikes, rebalancing, marketing and so on,” Houle told WAMC.
Bewegen notified ValleyBike share officials earlier this year about the changes to its business plan, said Houle.
“The discussions we are having with the municipalities is going well and we really wish everything can continue so ValleyBike can have a future,” she said. “We know how important it was -- and it is -- for all the users of ValleyBike.”
The decision by Bewegen means the eight participating ValleyBike Share communities are being asked to put money into the system to keep it going, said Carolyn Misch, the Director of Planning and Sustainability for the city of Northampton, the lead community in the bike-share consortium.
“Transit costs money but Bewegen had covered that for the communities with the hopes that they would be able to find private sponsorship dollars that would cover those operational costs and they just haven’t been successful at that piece,” Misch said.
She said the ValleyBike share model may need to shift to something like how bicycle sharing is done in other places where deep-pocketed sponsors such as CitiBank in New York and Blue Cross Blue Shield in Boston underwrite the costs.
“All the communities really are working hard to try to save it because it is not only popular but has become an integral part of the transportation network,” Misch said.
The goal of the communities is to get bikes back on the streets in May, said Aaron Vega, the Director of Planning and Economic Development for the city of Holyoke.
“We’re looking at both a short term solution to get the bikes back out there as soon as possible and then a long-term solution – how do we move forward with a vendor to make sure there is a good business model that does match up with the success of the program so we can keep these bikes on the streets going forward,” Vega said.
Along with Northampton and Holyoke, the other participating municipalities are Amherst, Chicopee, Easthampton, South Hadley, Springfield, and West Springfield.
ValleyBike reported last year that more than 400,000 miles have been ridden since the system opened in 2018. There was a big jump in ridership last year after gasoline prices rose sharply.
