Since the birth of shared micromobility, municipality-run tenders have been de rigueur. However, a newly announced partnership between global software provider Urban Sharing and OEM Pashley Cycles is looking to shift the status quo.
Working with UK real estate developer Berkeley Group, the two firms are now delivering a micromobility service for a Berkeley Group housing community in London which could act as a blueprint for serving transport deprived areas.
“We are developing an alternative to traditional city-wide tenders which have stagnated in the UK over the past few years,” Urban Sharing CEO Kristian Brink tells Zag Daily.
“This is a new route for micromobility operators to serve UK communities directly and connect areas of the city that have limited transport options.”
Dubbed Green Quarter, the community is based in Southall which is some way outside the range of the Transport for London bike hire scheme, so these residents need another option.
Following an initial launch of 30 bikes in August 2024, plans are in place to expand the idea across Berkley developments throughout the country.
Combine and conquer
Pashley Cycles is the UK’s longest-established bicycle manufacturer that has built bikes for the Transport for London and West Midlands bikeshare schemes.
As part of the Green Quarter project, Pashley has provided the fleet of bikes, which is fitted with its proprietary IoT hardware; a team to maintain the scheme; and its “industry-leading” dock and locking system. Meanwhile, Urban Sharing is acting as a data and operations partner, and has developed a customised app that Green Quarter residents can use to hire the bikes.
“This is the first project where we have used our own IoT hardware enabling us to provide bikeshare schemes for an organisation like Berkley,” Pashley Cycles General Manager Steven Bell tells Zag Daily.
“Introducing this system has been a big step forward as we wanted to provide the whole system to our partners.”
Pashley has also developed a highly secure and robust dock and lock system – the Pashley Claw Lock – which it has since patented. Designed through a collaboration with a company that manufactures locks for the motor industry, Bell says it is a market leading product.
“The lock is based on a 5mm plate that secures the front of the bike from both sides,” he says.
“It can work in a dock-based or free-floating scheme, and the IoT knows when the bike has been docked and the journey has been completed.”
Urban Sharing’s technology will enable Pashley Cycles to monitor when the claw lock is not used properly, in addition to predicting when maintenance of the bikes is required.
“Our fleet management system allows all the data to be stored in one place and to be instantly accessible by the Pashley Cycles team,” Brinks says.
Serving transport dead spots
Until now Urban Sharing has not been involved in schemes this small, but Brink believes that the experience has already provided valuable insights for the business.
“Our platforms have previously been designed to manage thousands of bikes and customers and millions of trips,” he explains.
“However, we were never able to design such a flexible system that is intended for smaller schemes. Now that we have done that, we can service projects of all sizes and set up within just two weeks.”
To integrate its software with the hardware developed by Pashley, Urban Sharing has developed a system of bridges which enable a quick and seamless connection that can be replicated in systems of all sizes around the world.
“City-wide schemes tend to prioritise white collar areas that already have a lot of different transport options and high levels of economic engagement,” he explains.
“However, Urban Sharing wants to cater for more small-scale community schemes in an attempt to eliminate transport dead spots and better serve people on the periphery of the city too.”
The hope for Brink and Bell is that with new rules surrounding the need for housing developments to have accessible sustainable transport options available, there will be a paradigm shift away from public tenders towards more opportunities for smaller scale schemes.
“There are lots of smaller applications for bikeshare that have not yet been realised and we wanted to ensure that our bikes could be used by schemes of all sizes,” says Bell.
“Working with Urban Sharing allows us to sell our hardware to any organisation that wants to set up a bikeshare service. I think the partnership allows us to offer the ideal solution in any scenario.”
Elaborating on Bell’s comments, Brink says the scheme could be the start of a wider paradigm shift for micromobility in the UK. “The ecosystem is desperate for something new and this could provide new revenue streams for operators and software providers in the search for profitability.”
While the partnership is still in its early stages, it has created an interesting test case for similar models moving forward. With the authorities only renewing city-wide tenders every five to 10 years in many cases, expect to see more hardware and software manufacturers exploring new ways to bring micromobility to previously overlooked areas of the UK and the world.
