Press Releases
Dockless Bikeshare Begins Tomorrow in Silver Spring; MCDOT Signs Agreements with Two More Companies
For Immediate Release: Wednesday, October 25, 2017
The Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) has signed agreements with two more dockless bikeshare companies, Ofo and Limebike, to conduct a demonstration project in Silver Spring at no cost to the County. Montgomery County is the first suburban jurisdiction in the U.S. to have a dockless bike share system.
Limebike will position 240 bikes tonight and customers can begin using them Thursday morning, October 26.
Ofo will initially position 100 bikes on Thursday night that will be ready to use Friday morning, October 27. Ofo plans to expand the number of bikes over the next four weeks to 1,000.
On October 3, MCDOT signed an agreement with dockless bikeshare company Mobike, and their service is expected to begin soon.
Dockless Bikeshare does not rely on fixed bike stations. Customers use a mobile phone app to locate a nearby bike with GPS and unlock it. When a customer completes a dockless bike trip, the bike is parked on any publicly-owned land within the demonstration area. An option is to use the dockless bikeshare preferred parking areas marked by signs along Ellsworth Street next to Veteran’s Plaza and behind the Silver Spring Transit Center along Ripley Street. See map.
More information about Ofo and Limebike is available online. Contact Ofo at [email protected] or 844-289-9747. Contact Limebike at [email protected] or 1-888-546-3345. To use a dockless bike, a customer downloads the app associated with that company. There may be other options available to use the bikes. Questions about the service should be directed to the bikeshare companies.
Montgomery County’s agreement with dockless bike share companies is part of a demonstration project to test the concept. General feedback about the program or about a specific company is welcome. Send an email to mailto:[email protected], or contact MC311 either online or by calling 311 from within Montgomery County or 240-777-0311 from outside the County, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Or, follow MC311 on Twitter @311MC311.
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Media Contact: Esther Bowring, 240-777-7170