MoGo Bike Share Tops 100,000 Rides Since Rolling Out

When the new bike share program serving the city of Detroit launched, MoGo, the criticisms were swift and ranged from “they’re all going to get stolen” to “no one is going to care.”

But according to new data put out by MoGo, an affiliate of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, the service has hit some key milestones over the five months since launch.

• There have been more than 100,000 MoGo bike share trips taken
• 2,000 Monthly and Annual passes have been sold
• 17% of those passes sold were the less expensive $5 annual one for people who get state benefits
• Sold more than 18,000 daily passes
• Had a peak day of 2,100 rides
• On average, each bike has taken 705 trips

“Seeing Detroiters embrace MoGo as a new way to move around the city has been nothing short of thrilling,” said Lisa Nuszkowski, founder and executive director of MoGo. “We’re proud to provide a transportation option that’s serving a diverse range of people and needs, and we look forward to continuing to provide that service as we move into the fall and winter seasons.”

The MoGo, according to last available numbers, cost about $2 million to get underway and $1 million a year to operate, with much of that amount offset by rider fees and sponsors. That’s much less than many of the infrastructure investments as of late.

So how does this stack up? Well, Detroit’s bike share system of 43 stations is in the middle of the pack of sizes. It’s no Chicago with more than 580 station, but there are similar cities.

For comparison, we’ll put up MoGo Detroit vs. B Cycle in Boulder, Colorado as it has a similar number of stations. For all of 2016, according to their annual report, B Cycle had 94,446 trips with their system. So Detroit’s already outpaced that in just five months of operation.

As we talked about with Nuszkowski on a recent Daily Detroit Happy Hour podcast, MoGo is exploring expanding throughout the city of Detroit as well as into the suburbs if it makes sense and there’s demand.