Nice Ride Minnesota
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Nice Ride Minnesota was a seasonally operated nonprofit
bicycle sharing system A bicycle-sharing system, bike share program, public bicycle scheme, or public bike share (PBS) scheme, is a shared transport service where bicycles are available for shared use by individuals at low cost. The programmes themselves include bo ...
in
Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...
and St. Paul,
Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
based on the BIXI brand created by
Public Bike System Company Lyft Urban Solutions, formerly PBSC Urban Solutions and originally Public Bike System Company, is an international bicycle-sharing system equipment vendor with their headquarters based in Longueuil, Quebec. The company develops bicycle-sharing s ...
and first used in
Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
. Launched on June 10, 2010, it served over 10,000 trips in its first month and reached 100,817 rides in the first season of operation. The bicycles in the system are manufactured by Cycles Devinci. They are painted fluorescent green and include a cargo carrier and headlights. They receive daily maintenance, and are redistributed throughout the system via truck. As of 2011, the system offered 1,700 bicycles for rent at 190 kiosks in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. The solar-powered kiosks are distributed throughout much of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Bike availability can be checked in real-time via
smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...
or an online map. In the long term, the network is intended to cover most of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nice Ride operates from the first week of April through the first week of November. The bikes and stations are removed during the winter in order to protect them from damage (particularly corrosion from
road salt Road salt (also known as de-icing salt, rock salt, or snow salt) is a salt used mainly as an anti-slip agent in winter road conditions, but also to prevent dust and snow build-up on roads. Various kinds of salts are used as road salt, but calciu ...
) and make way for snow plows. The system did not reopen after the end of the 2022 season, as Blue Cross Blue Shield, the main sponsor, announced it would not renew its sponsorship contract.


Memberships and fees

There were two ways to use the Nice Ride system, as a passholder or a member. Passes were available for 24 hours or 30 days and memberships included 30-day and 1-year options. Memberships had to be purchased or redeemed through the Nice Ride website, while passes could be purchased by
credit Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt) ...
or
debit card A debit card, also known as a check card or bank card, is a payment card that can be used in place of cash to make purchases. The card usually consists of the bank's name, a card number, the cardholder's name, and an expiration date, on either ...
at individual station kiosks for $6 (24 hours) or $18 (30 days). Members received an
RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder called a tag, a radio receiver, and a transmitter. When tri ...
"key" which was inserted into a slot on the bike dock to unlock a bike. Using a key to unlock a bike only took a few seconds, while the process of purchasing a 24-hour or 30-day pass and getting subsequent rentals required more user interaction with the kiosk. There was no limit to the number of trips allowed during a pass or membership period. For passholders, there was no additional charge for the first 30 minutes of each trip. Alternately, members got a full 60 minutes between stations with no additional charge. However, trip fees racked up quickly—particularly after 90 minutes without redocking the bike—reaching up to a daily limit of $65 after 7 hours of use (in addition to any pass or membership fee). This fee structure was designed to encourage short trips, keep bikes available, and push customers desiring multi-hour trips to use for-profit rental businesses rather than the subsidized bike-share service. Only about 2% of trips incurred any fees. In the 2010 and 2011 seasons, Nice Ride placed an
authorization hold Authorization hold (also card authorization, preauthorization, or preauth) is a service offered by credit and debit card providers whereby the provider puts a hold of the amount approved by the cardholder, reducing the balance of available funds u ...
on the credit or debit accounts of 24-hour subscribers per bicycle rented (24-hour subscribers can rent two bikes per credit/debit card at a time). The holds were initially set at $250 when system was launched in 2010, which caused problems for some customers—particularly those who had used debit cards, where it was possible cause an account
overdraft An overdraft occurs when something is withdrawn in excess of what is in a current account. For financial systems, this can be funds in a bank account. In these situations the account is said to be "overdrawn". In the economic system, if there i ...
. Prior to the system's launch, there was a concern that a large percentage of the bicycles would be stolen—especially in light of the
Vélib' is a large-scale public bicycle sharing system in Paris, France. The system encompasses more than 16,000 bikes and 1,400 stations. The name ''Vélib is a portmanteau of the French words ''vélo'' (''"bicycle"'') and ''liberté'' ("freedom"). ...
system in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
,
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, which had a theft rate of more than 50% in its first 18 months, and previous experience with theft and vandalism of free bikes provided by the Yellow Bike Coalition in Saint Paul a decade earlier. However, those worries proved to be unfounded with the new Bixi-based system—only one bike was counted as stolen in the 2010 season, and no bikes were lost or stolen in 2011. The authorization holds were reduced to $50 a few months after the June 2010 opening and were removed entirely for 2012.


System rollout and expansion

The Nice Ride system was first put in place in areas near downtown Minneapolis and has been expanded in multiple phases. The system expanded into western areas of neighboring Saint Paul in summer 2011 and had its first stations deployed in downtown Saint Paul in June 2012, bringing the total number of bikes to 1,328 and stations to 146. In May 2013, the system were further expended with the installation of 24 additional stations, mostly located in southern Minneapolis or along the Mississippi River, raising the total number of bikes to 1,550 and the total number of stations to 170. Nice Ride was criticized by residents in North Minneapolis, an economically disadvantaged part of the city, when the initial deployment of bikes in June 2010 was focused around downtown Minneapolis and areas south of downtown (which tend to be more densely populated than the city's north side). It took until the second phase of deployment in 2010 for the neighborhood to get stations. The first stations in North Minneapolis appeared along Broadway and at Summit Academy and International Market Square. Startup funding for this program was $3.2 million; major contributors included Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, the City of Minneapolis, and a federal transportation grant from the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program.


Ridership


Technology

The platform behind the bike share system is created by 8D Technologies, who also supply the server technology for
BIXI Montréal Bixi (sometimes stylized as BIXI) is a public bicycle sharing system serving the metropolitan area of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Launched in May 2009 by Public Bike System Company (PBSC), it is North America's first large-scale bike sharing syste ...
, Citi Bike in New York City,
Santander Cycles Santander Cycles (formerly Barclays Cycle Hire) is a public bicycle hire scheme in London in the United Kingdom. The scheme's bicycles have been popularly known as Boris Bikes, after Boris Johnson who was Mayor of London when the scheme began o ...
in London,
Capital Bikeshare Capital Bikeshare (also abbreviated CaBi) is a bicycle-sharing system that serves Washington, D.C., and certain counties of the Washington metropolitan area, larger metropolitan area. it had 700+ stations and more than 5,400 bicycles. The memb ...
in Washington DC, and others.


Future Plans

On January 16, 2018, Nice Ride Minnesota announced that it had chosen
Motivate Motivation is an internal state that propels individuals to engage in goal-directed behavior. It is often understood as a force that explains why people or animals initiate, continue, or terminate a certain behavior at a particular time. It i ...
's proposal for transition of the Twin Cities’ bike share system.


See also

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