Bad publicity for Bewegen, one of the pionners in ebike-sharing… Less than a year after the launch in october 2016, Baltimore Bike Share has been shutted down from september 12th until october 15th this year, after decision of the city officials.

The program was suffering a huge wave of bike run-aways theft and vandalism, in unprecented proportions according to Bewegen’s CEO Alain Ayotte. Well if we can understand that there is more vandalism in some cities, it is still quite worrying to see that the bikes are vulnerable even IN station…

It seems that the locking mechanism is not stong enough, having Bewegen to redesign a specific “Baltimore lock” that automatically clamps the bicycles in the station when they’re pulled on. I don’t think that Baltimore guys are Supermen (sorry guys), so I assume it will soon be a “Global Lock”. The maintenance (and balancing) of the system has also been undersized (2 maintenance staff for 230 bikes), resulting in a constant 100 bikes awaiting repairs, resulting in empty stations, resulting in angry customers!

This is why the city official agreed to shut down the program for a month: all bikes will be equipped with this new lock, and all damaged bike are beeing sent back to Bewegen’s headquarters for refurbishment… It will be a steep bill for M. Ayotte.

I just published “Baltimore Bike Share Only Has Four Bikes” https://t.co/VU4twzL6sY

— Brian Seel (@cylussec) 11 septembre 2017