After a Wet Winter, Bikeshare Ridership Lags in Los Angeles

Bikeshare is still fairly new in Los Angeles, located mostly around downtown before expanding to the rest of the city. So far, however, residents have been slow to adopt the system.

1 minute read

April 21, 2017, 1:00 PM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Metro Bikeshare

Miune / Shutterstock

Aaron Mendelson reports that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (Metro) bikeshare program has some catching up to do if it wants to hit the ridership targets set for this summer.

"Numbers released thus far show that the L.A. county transit agency has a way to go before reaching its mid-summer goal to have two rides every day for each of its 800 bikes," writes Mendelson. "On March 31st, the most recent day for which data is available, each bike was at less than half that figure: 0.7 rides per bike."

Data released by Metro recently shows that ridership was in steady decline through the winter, only recently picking back up in March. The article includes a few infographics to help visualize the ridership for the system so far. Medelson also notes a few other interesting factoids from the ridership data:

  • The typical trip has taken about 10 minutes.
  • 90 percent of trips are one-way rides.
  • Over 60 percent of trips are by riders with a monthly pass; 31 percent are walk-ups.

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