How do you react to the craze of dockless bike-sharing when you’re an historical supplier of station-based solutions? Zagster chose to widen its offer by launching a new dockless system: PACE.

The solution is said to offer “all the benefits of dockless bike sharing with none of the drawbacks”. Zagster developped 3 features to be differentiated from other suppliers:

• Adapts to each city’s needs, environment and character by intelligently placing dedicated Pace bike racks in key areas to maximize ridership and equity;
• Features a two-point security system to ensure bikes lock to fixed objects — not just to themselves — to mitigate theft and abuse and preserve public right of way; and
• Offers the reliability of dedicated bike share parking plus the freedom of point-to-point travel and ‘hold’ capabilities for mid-rental stops.

Sounds like Social Bicycle, no??

Pace have been successfully beta-tested in Rochester, NY, Zagster announcing a “800% increase in ridership in the first 90 days of service […] compared to station-based bike shares in similar cities”. It would have been interesting to get the complete study, as the figure is impressive.

Tallahassee (Flo.), Albuquerque (N.M.), Rochester (N.Y.), Knoxville (Tenn.), and Huntsville (Ala.) will all be equipped with PACE before april 2018.

Let’s wait for other providers of station-based systems to give their own answers!!