As bike lanes expand in Columbia, the city abandons its rentable bike program
Rentable bikes at stations across Columbia won’t be returning after being removed and put into storage in 2023.
The bikes are common in major cities, and for a few years, residents and visitors in Columbia, too, were able to rent a bike to ride around the Midlands.
But the stations where the bikes once waited for riders have sat empty for years, after the management company that operated the program abruptly pulled out of Columbia. The city previously told The State it wanted to find a way to bring the bikes back, and maybe even expand into other Midlands cities.
But now, that effort is dead in the water and the city plans to sell all of the defunct equipment, including the empty city-owned bike stations that now languish across Columbia. Selling the stations would eliminate the infrastructure needed to quickly relaunch the program, effectively ending any short-term revival plans.
The decision comes as local and regional leaders have made a concerted effort — along with budgeting serious money — to make the Columbia area and beyond better looking, safer for people on foot and bikes, and better connected through greenways, new sidewalks and bike lanes.
For connectivity experts, the decision seems contradictory.
“It is a step back,” to end the bike share program, said Regan Freeman, Director of Advocacy and Development at Cola Town Bike Collective, a cycling and connectivity-focused nonprofit in Columbia.
“There’s more connectivity than there’s ever been,” in Columbia, Freeman said. The Three Rivers Greenway continues its expansion, new state-of-the-art bike lanes on South Main Street have received national recognition, and a slate of new greenway and sidewalk projects are on the horizon, including a $7 million effort to expand the Vista Greenway all the way to Bull Street.
Freeman said he’s thrilled with the gradual culture shift that’s happening around non-car-centric transportation in Columbia. But he added that while connectivity is the goal, “you’ve got to give people the ability to get there.” The bikes were for a few years one of those options.
Among the reasons the bikes won’t be returning? The city doesn’t have the money to pay for the system, and its primary private sponsor is also not returing to the program, city spokesperson Justin Stevens told The State. When the bike share program launched in 2018, it did so with money from Blue Cross Blue Shield, and a grant issued through the COMET bus system. Blue Cross Blue Shield is no longer sponsoring the bikes, Stevens said. The State has contacted Blue Cross Blue Shield for more information.
The city also attempted to find a new vendor for the bike program to no avail.
“The City of Columbia is currently evaluating options to remove the bike-share stations and determine how to sell or otherwise dispose of the remaining equipment,” Stevens said via email.
Why did bike rentals stall in 2023?
It’s been over two years since more than 100 rentable bikes that made up Columbia’s “Blue Bike” bike share program were put into storage after the bike share operator Bewegen Technologies suddenly pulled out of the city in spring 2023 amid speculation that the company had filed for bankruptcy. The company denied that claim.
Regardless, the company ended its relationship with Columbia and several other cities across the U.S., including Raleigh, North Carolina, leaving the city without a vendor to manage the equipment and software that would allow a person to rent the bikes for a given period of time.
Nearly 20 bike stations have sat empty across the city since that time.
But even when the bikes were available, users often reported that they were unreliable. A bike might work for a mile and then completely shut down, Scott Nuelken, executive director of Cola Town Bike Collective, previously told The State.
The bikes were also never used to the degree that many had hoped for the program. In 2019, its highest year of ridership, the bike share program logged 12,963 rides — less than half of the 29,000 rides projected in a 2015 Columbia bike and pedestrian master plan. That’s according to a 2023 study conducted by the Central Midlands Council of Governments that looked at expanding the system beyond Columbia. That study was published the same year Columbia’s bike share vendor abandoned the city.
However, the bikes thrived in a few key locations, according to that study.
Of the 18 bike stations that were active in the city between 2019 and the end of 2022, the station at Columbia’s Riverfront Park accounted for 36% of all trip departures with more than 14,000 rides from that station in four years. The second most-used station was at Benedict College, with just over 3,600 rides during those four years.
Freeman, the bike advocate, said he believes that if Columbia continues to invest in greenways and bike lanes, eventually there might be an appetite to see the bikes back in some capacity.
This story was originally published January 22, 2026 at 11:32 AM.
