The Indego bike share program got rid of its cheap, single-ride option nearly six years ago, but Alper Ozturk still occasionally remembers and gets mad all over again.
It last happened just a couple a weeks ago, after he finished up an archery session and was heading to El Bar in Fishtown, where he hosts karaoke on Monday nights. He was running late and it occurred to him that a bike would be super handy at the moment.
“So I went over to the Indego thing, hoping that they had re-added the quick trip, saw that it wasn’t there, and ended up having to just kind of run. That’s not ideal,” said Ozturk, a tech consultant who lives in Fishtown. “I guess I could have taken an Uber but, you know, I didn’t want to do that for a mile.”
He took to Reddit to complain about the program, whose lowest rental tier is a $15 day pass. “This was such an unbelievably stupid move on their end,” he wrote. “Why the hell would anyone pay $15 to rent a [obscenity] BIKE when they can just get an Uber to where they’re going for $10?”
His remarks stoked a lively discussion, with 150 comments so far. Some people commiserated and had additional complaints about Indego, while others heaped praise on the nine-year-old city-sponsored program and said it was a good deal for frequent riders who buy monthly or yearly passes.
“It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than constantly taking Ubers everywhere, and it’s nice not to have to worry about my personal bike getting stolen while it’s locked up, or if I want to do a one-way bike trip and get home a different way,” wrote one commenter, who said they live in Fairmount. “All that said, I don’t think it’s a great model if you aren’t going to use it on a regular basis.”
Similar rants have regularly popped up on social media since April 2018, when the program announced a new pricing structure that eliminated its single-trip fare.
Will Ozturk and his fellow frustrated riders some day be able jump on a bike again for just four or five dollars? That’s not clear yet — although the people who operate and oversee Indego say they’re well aware of the calls to bring it back.
“Ideally, it would be great if they could just see what the community feels about them and make the appropriate changes to their pricing model in a way that’s going to benefit the Philadelphia citizen or visitors,” Ozturk said.
Limits to growth
As some of the Reddit commenters noted, Indego’s formula seems to be successful despite the complaints.
Total rides have steadily increased since at least 2020, and last year exceeded 1 million rides for the first time. That’s according to data provided by the city’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability (OTIS), which runs the program, and Bicycle Transit Systems, the Philly-based company that operates it for the city.
However, Indego still has far few riders than bike shares in cities like Miami (1.7 million annual rides), Washington, D.C. (4.5 million), Chicago (6.3 million bike and scooter trips), and New York (more than 30 million rides), which all offer cheap, single-ride options.
In addition, the changes to the program that have spurred its growth over the last few years may be approaching their limits, said Nicole Brunet, policy director at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, which collaborates with the city and Indego to encourage cycling.
One of those efforts has been the installation of rental stations in more areas outside of Center City, which is central to the city’s goal of making bikes more accessible in underserved communities. It added 64 new stations and 495 bikes last year, bringing the current total to 250 stations and 2,400 bikes, according to Nate Bowman-Johnston, the Indego general manager at Bicycle Transit Systems.
Ridership has also been boosted by the popularity of Indego’s easier-to-ride e-bikes, which have grown to constitute 54% of its fleet. But e-bike rental is more expensive, limiting their appeal somewhat, Brunet said.
If Philadelphia wants to achieve the levels of ridership other cities are seeing, Indego may need to consider new tweaks to its offerings, she said. That could mean stocking up on more regular, non-electric bicycles — and reinstituting a low-cost quick-trip option.
The absence of those choices is “shrinking the options for some people, because I think there’s a percentage of people — honestly like myself — who would ride Indego more if there was a single-ride option,” Brunet said. “We’re seeing a slight plateau in the e-bike rates. It’s possible that we’re not going to go past this [ridership level] if this is the payment capacity of riders.”
The Bike Coalition has been advocating for a single-ride option. “That’s really integral to growing the system,” she said.
“Massive increase” in theft
Before the changes in 2018, anyone could stroll up to an Indego rack, use a credit card to pay a few dollars for a half-hour ride, and be on their way.
Under the current structure, you need to use a phone or computer to sign up for one of the passes. Since the most recent price increase in 2022, those start at $15 for a day of individual 60-minute rides, $20 a month, or $156 for a year.
Longer rides, and electric bikes, incur additional per-minute fees. Cheaper options are available for holders of the EBT cards used to obtain SNAP food and cash benefits.
Ozturk and other Reddit posters said they suspected that Bicycle Transit Systems eliminated the single-ride option to boost its profits — although some commenters noted that it runs programs in Los Angeles and Las Vegas that do offer cheap quick-trip fares.
In truth, Indego had to change its fare offerings in 2018 “due to a massive increase in bike theft that was happening, largely due to the single-trip pass,” said Bowman-Johnston, the program manager at Bicycle Transit Systems. “The scale of theft was so large that it threatened the entire program and we needed to take action to ensure that Indego could continue providing service.”
People were using fraudulent credit cards and other similar schemes to check out bikes and steal them, he said. The problem also led Indego to stop offering a pay-as-you-go Flexpass in 2020, and to discontinue credit card payments that contributed to a rash of e-bike thefts in particular.
Waffiyyah Murray, OTIS’ Indego program manager, said that ensuring the service’s “financial sustainability” was critical for it to meet users’ transportation needs.
“Revenues used to operate Indego come from fees paid by Indego users, sponsorship of the program by Independence Blue Cross, and advertising revenues from advertisements posted on selected stations,” she said. “No public funds are used to operate Indego.”
Clearly, though, several bike share companies around the country have found workarounds to allow single-ride trips, including Bicycle Transit Systems in other cities. Bowman-Johnston said the company would like to bring them back in Philly as well.
“Indego recognizes the need for a single-trip pass option,” he said. “We have better security parameters in our app that we feel could help reduce the fraud and bike theft issue. Our plan is to do some feasibility work this year to look at security, as well as assess how best to integrate a single-trip pass back into our current pass mix.”
