The dockless bike-share pilot program in Seattle is over! Don’t panic, the bikes wil stay in the streets at least until july 2018. It only means that the data collection period stops…

Meanwhile, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) will start analysing the data with its partners at the University of Washington in january in order to provide recommendations for a permanent bike-share program to the City Council next spring. SDOT already released a first data analysis last month with good figures, comparing to the former station-based Pronto program.

The pilot program started in july 2017 with 500 bikes for each operator (LimeBike, Spin and Ofo). The total number now reach 9400 bikes, way behind the limit fixed by the SDOT (28000 bikes). According to Joel Miller, SDOT’s director of the bike-share program, operators do not want to have big numbers of bikes, as the rules for maintenance and distribution (as an exemple, unproperly parked bikes have to be removed within 2 hours on weekdays, within 10 hours on night and week-ends) forces to have a large workforce. Though, the penalties seems to be only warnings…