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In big cities, bike shares are run by big business. In Youngstown, Ohio, family-owned Yogo Bikeshare believes in the power of ‘miniature mobility’.
And that shift in thinking could be revolutionary for the bike-sharing industry as a whole.
Founder Ronnell Elkins launched Yogo BikeShare last year to democratize the e-bike experience for 60,000 Youngstown residents.
He told Streetsblog in a podcast interview that the idea began in 2017 when a trip to D.C. and seeing their bike sled system got him thinking about how his city could benefit from bike rentals.
A small town has a big opportunity.
Rather than seeing the small-town size as a deterrent, Elkins saw it as an entrepreneurial opportunity to rethink how bikes were made. “We want to be the first to introduce it and grow it, ‘OK, we don’t have anything here [in terms of bike sharing]. There are no rules or regulations for it. “Let’s create laws and regulations for bike sharing in our community and let’s grow it and see how it works,” he said in an interview.
Cities like Youngstown are often overlooked by bikeshare giants like Lyft, because those big businesses require growth and expansion to be profitable.
But a small and agile company like Yogo Bikeshar can quickly establish itself in the market and grow as a rider.
“We look forward to helping more people from all socio-economic backgrounds,” Elkins told The Street Blog. “We want to provide alternative means of transportation, to be healthy, to have access to healthy fruits and vegetables and things like that. We just want to be a tool that people can use to take advantage of them.”
Elkins added that while Yogo Bikeshare is a black-owned business — unfortunately unique in the bike industry — he doesn’t want to define Yogo. “I don’t pay too much attention to black ownership,” he told The Street Blog. “I emphasized that our job is to lead in a way that our city is proud of. That was my focus from the beginning, and that will continue to be my focus.”
A bike share that is 100 percent e-bikes
Yogo Bikeshare works similarly to regular bike shares around the world: it’s app-based and riders can choose individual or subscription options.
The biggest difference is that Elkins focused exclusively on ebikes instead of starting with regular bikes.
And that shift required teaching the community how to ride, which led to hosting bike nights and town halls, which helped spread the word about the new bike sled.
He also believes that ebikes are the future of transportation as they make cycling accessible to more people.
When BikeShare officially launches this spring, there will be three ready-to-ride docks and 30 ebikes strategically placed around Youngstown. You can learn more about YoGo Bikeshare here.
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