A ride-sharing giant is ready to get into D.C.’s bike game with its latest acquisition.
On Monday, Lyft announced it will buy the core operations of New-York based Motivate, which owns Capital Bikeshare and similar programs in eight U.S. cities.
Motivate is the largest bike-share operator in the U.S., with programs including New York’s Citi Bike, Chicago’s Divvy and Boston’s Blue Bikes.
As part of the agreement, Lyft is acquiring Motivate’s technology and corporate functions, including its city contracts, according to a company blog post. Motivate’s bike maintenance and servicing operations will remain a standalone business.
Lyft said there would be no immediate changes to Capital Bikeshare, and it will begin integrating it into the Lyft app when the deal closes.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Early reports on the potential merger valued the acquisition around $250 million.
The deal comes on the heels of Lyft raising $600 million in a Fidelity Investments-led funding round last week. It's also testing a "Transit" program on the app to integrate with public transportation services.
The move isn’t far behind a foray into the bike-sharing space by Uber, which in April paid about $200 million for JUMP, which runs an electric bike network. Uber integrated that service into its app and has been rolling it out in several cities, including D.C.
Launched in 2010, Motivate has 800 employees and claims it facilitated 80 percent of bike-share rides in 2017. It reported 374,000 trips on its Capital Bikeshare system in May this year.
Capital Bikeshare has about 4,500 bikes and 500 docking stations in the D.C. metro area, according to its website. That total includes Arlington, Alexandria, Montgomery, Prince George’s County and Fairfax County as well. Single trips under 30 minutes cost $2, a day pass costs $8 and an annual membership costs $85.
Capital Bikeshare is the successor to DDOT's first bike-sharing system, Smartbike DC, which launched in August 2008 with 10 stations and 100 bikes.
Other private bike-sharing companies that cruise around the local area include Mobike, LimeBike and Spin.
