My city’s subway has done impressively well at recovering from its pandemic-induced collapse in ridership, but the transportation system that has rebounded better yet around Washington relies on only two wheels per vehicle.

And despite not having an everyday office to commute to and from, I’ve been along for much of this ride at Capital Bikeshare. Our bike-sharing service continues to serve as a convenient and cheaper alternative to Metro for trips into the District and between events in D.C., and a few other changes have further elevated CaBi’s role in my transportation toolkit.

One looked like a downgrade when it was announced in 2021 with inadequate advance notice: The increase in the annual membership fee from $85 to $95 also extended the length of a free ride for members on a regular bike from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. That means I can get from my house to Capitol Hill and points slightly beyond in a single ride without having to worry about having to stop midway to dock one bike and take out another.

Another arrived with less discussion than CaBi’s introduction of new, extra-cost e-bikes: updated “classic” bikes, distinguishable by a longer cargo shelf in front of the handlebars and a red fairing covering the top of the back wheel, that feature a continuously variable transmission instead of the three gears of the older bikes. Those newer rides are easier to take on moderately hillier routes, which means much of D.C. and its neighbors.

A third has come from local governments: The District and Arlington have done impressive work in adding bike lanes that aren’t just painted white lines but cycle tracks split from car traffic by concrete dividers.

Then I bought a bike helmet that I can easily grab for most trips: a Closca folding model, which I picked up on sale at $60 on Amazon after reading the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute’s approving assessment of it among other foldable helmets. This neatly solved two problems I’d had with using the helmet I’ve long worn for recreational rides on weekends: It’s not gross from caked-on sweat, and because its concentric rings snap folded in a second or two, I can tuck it into my regular laptop bag even with my laptop already there.

Millions of other Washington-area cyclists seem to agree with my assessment of CaBi. Its public stats show that the service–operated by Motivate, a company the ride-hailing firm Lyft bought in 2018–has grown from 337,704 trips in May of 2019 to 515,394 in May of 2024. That remains far below Metro’s daily ridership even as dented by continued remote work, yet it’s still good enough to vault our bikeshare system past Chicago’s to become the second most-used bikeshare network in the U.S.

Finally, almost 23 years after my overdue introduction to CaBi, I’ve taken the bait of its Bike Angels rewards program, which offers kickbacks to cyclists who take bikes out of stations nearing capacity or park bikes at those nearing emptiness. This neatly slots into the intersection between my fondness for gamification schemes and my readiness to overthink any commercial transaction, and so far it’s only required me to alter my bikeshare routine in three ways to cash in. First I check the CaBi app for stations offering an extra incentive for dropoffs or pickups, then I alter my own course accordingly as long as it’s not more than two or three blocks out of the way, and finally I redouble those efforts when the app says I can earn double or triple points.

And once you convert those points in the app for e-bike credit–the sliding redemption scale encourages holding off, because 80 points for $10 beats 10 points for $1–you can burn those rewards on speedier e-bike rides that in turn generate outsized rewards when a Bike Angels bonus activates. For a more detailed look into how these incentives can twist a cyclist’s behavior, see Chris Person’s strategy guide to the equivalent system at New York’s considerably more expensive Citi Bike.

I’m not going to say that all of this amounts to one giant leap towards the Copenhagenification of D.C. But all of these small steps combined have made this place a better place for getting around without so many cars.

6/15/2024: I rewrote the last paragraph after a better conclusion popped into my head not long after I woke up Saturday and added a little more explanation of Bike Angels.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/06/14/bikeshare-keeps-rolling-along/