Metro makes it official – bikeshare is not in the transit agency’s plans or 2025 budget

The Metropolitan Transit Authority has canceled plans for a bike-share program that originally was slated to launch this past summer, focusing instead on microtransit to connect transit riders to bus routes, agency officials announced Thursday.

" Our proposed 2025 budget does not include bikeshare," Metro Chief Financial Officer George Fotinos said during a Customer Experience, Operations, and Business Development committee meeting, citing the agency's renewed focus on increasing ridership and improving customer experience.

Fotinos said the agency would continue to evaluate a potential bikeshare program with help from the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs. The scope of what will be researched has not been set, though it will deal with the feasibility of a transit-oriented bikeshare program in Houston.

"The feasibility has to do with how it operates. It's not conclusive, and so we're asking for actual help," Fotinos said.

Part of the agency's justification comes from the growth of Metro's curb2curb service, which officials say is faster than any other service the agency provides. Curb2curb is an on-demand service currently available in four areas in the city that lack immediate access to a Metro bus route. The agency has plans to expand the service as part of its fiscal 2025 budget, though it has not yet identified any new service areas.

"We have a mode. It's the fastest growing mode. We can scale it really quick," Fotinos said. "We're going to invest in that for '25."

Metro's curb2curb ridership numbers for fiscal 2024 are just shy of 240,000, which represents an increase of more than 26 percent over the previous year. Meanwhile, the local bus system has serviced more than 5.3 million passengers.

Asked whether the investment in microtransit would translate to increased ridership that matched other investments in the transit system, officials were noncommittal.

"We're going to work our way through it," Interim President and CEO Tom Jasien said, pointing out that most of the budget's focus was on public safety and customer experience. "We're challenged. We're going to try to make sure that we provide the greatest level of mobility that we can with the resources we have."

The agency also entered an agreement in July with Evolve Houston for more than $1 million to fund and expand Ryde, a no-cost rideshare service launched last year in the Third Ward area with a focus on underserved communities.

Thursday's announcement comes almost a year after the agency approved a potential contract with Quebec-based PBSC Urban Solutions to create a bikeshare program that was due to launch this past summer.

At the time, Houston also had BCycle, a bikeshare provider that folded earlier this year due to lack of funding. While there was some conversation about the two systems working together, Metro officials never committed to the idea. Houston BCycle has since folded.

Joe Cutrufo, executive director of bicycling advocacy organization BikeHouston, called Metro's decision a "slap in the face" to people who previously used bikeshare in Houston.

"Bikeshare is the original form of microtransit," Cutrufo said, arguing such a service could see rapid growth because there currently is no bikeshare in Houston.

The decision does not come as a complete surprise, as agency officials have been hesitant to commit to bikeshare as Metro re-oriented its focus under new leadership. Jasien said the agency had been struggling with how bikeshare could complement a transit system as opposed to being its own standalone mode of transportation.

"That's not really within our charge, right? We've got to make it a link to transit, otherwise it's likely outside of our scope," Jasien said.

The statement irked Cutrufo.

"This is the same person who just said frequency doesn't affect ridership. Any transit professional on this planet will tell you that frequency is among the most important things when it comes to ridership," Cutrufo said, alluding to a statement Jasien recently made . "It's hard to take that seriously given what little this person knows about running a transit system."