Lyft Will Give Big Discounts For Bike, Scooter Rides

Fresh after acquiring bike-sharing network Motivate, Lyft is making an effort to encourage people to try its scooter and bike sharing services.

In his medium post, John Zimmer, cofounder of the famous ride-hailing company stated his plan to collaborate with cities to begin its scooter and bike sharing services in order to connect community members with public transit.

Lyft aims to have 50 percent of its rides to be "shared" just like Uber pool, and to urge its customers to use a combination of public transit and Lyft rides.

According to Zimmer, the app will be highlighting the capacity to connect the first and last-mile gap. Soon, people will be able to have real-time transit information, plan a trip that's multi-modal, and use the Lyft scooters and bikes to connect to a transit stop or shared ride pickup location.

Big Discounts For Riders

Just last month, the company purchased Motivate for a reported sum of $250 million. The acquired company takes charge of the Washington DC's Capital Bikeshare, Ford's GoBike program in San Francisco, New York City's Citi Bike and many more bike-sharing operation throughout the country.

Since then, Lyft has been working on fusing the services it offers with the app and rebranding it as Lyft Bikes.

To encourage people to use the multi-modal trip type, the company stated in its application that it is considering to give up to 100 percent discounts on rides which will start or end at a designated transit stops such as BART, CalTrain, and MUNI.

Lyft Partnerships

According to the company, it has already set up its partnerships with 25 counties and cities within America. The first two which will be reflected on the app will be Santa Monica, California, and Marin County.

The Lyft cofounder also added that the company will be investing in local non-profits to bring additional transportation options to many low-income neighborhoods.

Furthermore, Lyft claims to have reduced the number of cars on the streets by 250,000 in 2017, and envisions to raise the number to 1 million by next year.

The announcement came a week after Lyft's rival, Uber, invested in transportation-sharing company, Lime, which enables it to rent bikes and scooters through the app.

Both Uber and Lyft are striving to become an all-encompassing transportation service. Uber CEO even stated his desire to make the company take charge of the bus systems for a city.