After Uber bought Jump, riders started e-biking instead of ordering cars

It’s been a year since the bright red Jump electric-assist bikes started popping up around San Francisco streets. It’s also been a year since you could rent the e-bikes through the Uber app as part of a bike-sharing pilot program for the ride-hailing app.

In those 12 months a lot went down: Uber bought Jump, Jump launched e-scooters in some cities, and Uber vowed to become the “Amazon of transportation.” Jump crunched the numbers and found its year in San Francisco was just as busy as Uber’s.

Jump released numbers Friday that show 63,000 riders in SF took more than 625,000 trips, covering more than 1.6 million miles. San Francisco limited the number of bicycles to 250 until it doubled the fleet size in October 2018. The bicycles can be locked to any rack or post and don’t require a dock.

That’s a lot of rides, but what stands out are the numbers after Uber acquired Jump in April. The full integration with the ride-hailing app turned people away from ride-hailing quite significantly. Uber trips went down 10 percent. Uber trips were displaced with Jump bike-rides even more during the busy workday during the week: Uber trips went down 15 percent during those times. Those are also the more congested times in the city.

Back in July, Jump looked at how the bikes were impacting Uber car trips in the city. Since then Jump says the trend has continued. Jump became a more popular option during the day, while riders opted to ride in an Uber car more during the night. 

Jump started in Washington, D.C., but after launching in San Francisco its bikes (and e-scooters) have spread to other cities like Sacramento, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, and San Diego. In January, Jump released its next generation battery-powered bicycle with a retractable cable lock and touch display.

All this data shows how e-bikes, e-scooters, and yes, even public transit, can work together to get people around. The demand for Jump bikes in San Francisco is especially notable: each bike has an average of seven rides per day. Now that’s a bike-share.