The emergency legislation passes unanimously!

Amendment passes

Yes: JLG, mcduffie, Parker, pinto, r white, t white, bonds, felder, Henderson
No: Mendelson, Nadeau, Allen, frumin

Parker is supporting the amendment to encourage more public engagement in the process

Pinto: “while yes it’s true that I have heard the most objection to this from Georgetown residents…” lol she fully just sounds like a spokesperson for Georgetown NIMBYs throughout this whole discussion. Allen is punching holes in all of her arguments

Bonds: “if this amendment allows for more public input then I will definitely support it” 🙄

Imagine choosing to drive to the airport

Incentivizing people to dock their bikes is good for the system, but only if there are stations available. CaBi should invest in new stations in places like EOTR DC, PG County, and west Arlington where micromobility demand is growing faster than stations are being installed

The cost of leaving a bike undocked in this program has gone from $0 to $2 (though there's also a $40 monthly ride credit to pay fees and e-bike costs). This theory is further supported by the trend I documented last month that undocked e-bike ridership decreased the most in low-income areas of DC

What might be driving this? The member e-bike rate increased 50% from $0.10 to $0.15/min but the additional fee for leaving a bike undocked remained at $2. My suspicion is that this is partially explained by changing ridership by members of the low-income Capital Bikeshare for All program.

Overall, member e-bike rides have declined since Aug but of the ridership that remains, the vast majority of riders are now choosing to start or end at a station.

Breaking down CaBi ridership by member vs non-member, e-bike vs classic, and docked vs un-docked is where some interesting trends emerge. Look at what's happening with undocked and docked member e-bike rides!...

Non-CaBi ebike ridership in particular is skyrocketing in 2025! It increased 91% YoY in Sept despite an only ~4% increase in the # of bikes available. It's likely that some of CaBi's decline is due to ridership shifting to Lime/Veo/Spin bikes.

CaBi ridership may be down, but citywide*, total micromobility (MM) usage is at an all-time high! There were 71k daily combined CaBi and MM rides in Sept, the highest ever. (data from Ride Report)

*FYI, I didn't clip CaBi data to DC boundaries (DC typically accounts for ~75% of rides)

One of my hotter takes is that BRT is far more of a scam than light rail is. I can’t wait to compare the effects of the Purple Line to Marc Elrich’s glorious BRT system he keeps championing once both are running