A new (very) affordable bike share: Rent a bike for a buck - The Boston Globe

For Luis Montes De Oca, working for DoorDash delivering groceries in Boston can be a challenge, to put things mildly. He has no car, he has no bike.

Enter Cambridge-based startup, Metro Mobility, which is offering an alternative: Rent an electric bike for the day for a buck.

Now, Montes De Oca has easy access to a bike with a basket to zip around. “It’s really convenient to get around a busy city,” he said.

Metro Mobility began installing e-bike docks in low-income communities with two locations in May 2023 and has since expanded to 10 locations.

“We want to basically make it as close to free as possible, so that people can really use the bikes for all-day transportation,” said Ryan Walas, chief marketing officer for Metro Mobility.

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An all-day bike rental is cheaper than the bus, which costs $1.70 a ride. “You can’t take the bus for $1, so we’re excited about that,” said David Montague, chief executive and cofounder of Metro Mobility. “This is a program that brings justice to the low-income communities.”

Users apply through an app by filling out a short survey to prove their income level. For those who do not qualify, they can rent a bike for $12 a day.

Metro Mobility has stations in Dorchester, Mattapan, Quincy Point, downtown Boston, and Lawrence, and a few other locations.

“We specifically chose the areas that we wanted to serve based on the needs,” Walas said. The company targets areas designated as “environmental justice” communities by the state, where the population on average is low-income, has a high percentage of people of color, and/or where a sizable number of households do not speak English very well, if at all.

In Malden, the company is working with that city’s housing authority and the Bowdoin Apartments complex to place e-bikes on the property.

“They [residents] walk out the door, it’s automatically charged, ready to go,” Walas said.

Since Metro Mobility launched, the e-bikes have served 480 unique users, according to Walas. Of the users who provided demographic data, 79 percent qualified as low-income.

The rentals are roundtrip. Riders can go shopping, to school, or to work; they just need to return the bike to the place they started. Each bike comes with a lock.

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The company also hopes to expand to near college campuses. Montague said it’s a great advantage for students because they can rent a bike in the morning, go to class, lunch, and evening hangouts. Students who qualify as low-income can also rent the bike for $1 a day.

“They don’t have to basically hope and pray that there’s a bike available, because that’s their bike for the day,” Montague said.

That’s Montes De Oca strategy, tenfold — he rents a bike and docks it by his apartment for the max 10 days at a time. He said the cost savings with Metro Mobility have been a life changer.

He bikes to the commuter rail in Lawrence, then loads his bike on the train for the ride to Boston. Once there, he stores deliveries in a catering bag in the front basket, then he zips around Boston. Besides the savings — no gas, no parking, no car payments, no insurance — there’s this bonus to a bike rental: “It’s more convenient and easier to deliver.”

Rachel Umansky-Castro can be reached at [email protected].