On Thursday, August 1st Indego Bike Share announced the return of Single Ride Passes. The original single-ride option ended in 2018 and was replaced with the 24 Hour Guest Pass. It will again be open to casual riders at a competitive price or better than on-demand shared ride services or taxis.
In 2023 Indego bikes hosted over 1 million trips in 2023, making it the 8th busiest public transportation operator in Pennsylvania, but in comparison with other big city bike share systems Indego’s ridership is still relatively small. The single ride option broadens Indego’s reach beyond its target audience, which has been and will continue to be annual pass holders, especially their very successful PA AccessPass program. The fare structure made little sense to residents and workers who primarily rely on transit, visitors who wanted to try riding bikes in the city and people who already rely on their own bikes to get around. The single-ride pass is great for that trip when neither transit nor walking is the best option.
Why Are E-Bikes So Expensive and So Many Are Out of Order?
E-bikes are so expensive mainly due to the higher costs of buying and maintaining e-bikes. With standard bicycles, all that is required is to balance bikes between stations and to remove or quickly repair disabled bikes. With e-bikes, Indego employees also need to manually swap out batteries or transport bikes to a central location for charging. Until that swap happens, battery-depleted bikes go out of service. Other bike share programs, like Divvy in Chicago, are beginning to roll out solar-powered self-charging docks and we hope that Indego will do the same in the future.
While the classic (standard) bike pricing is straightforward, trying to figure out the cost of e-bikes can cause a migraine. If you plan on renting for more than one day in a month, a monthly pass is a huge discount, although you do have to remember to cancel your automatic renewal subscription either online or in the app if you don’t plan on using Indego consistently.
To compare the value of using two Single Ride Trips vs a 24 Hour Guest Pass we put together two sample trips of 30 and 60 minutes long (Tax is not included in our cost estimates).
30 Minutes, 3.7 miles: Start at the Indego station at 29th St and Tasker St (South Philadelphia) and ride to the Indego station at 19th St and Girard Ave (Fairmount)
If you plan on going for a ride longer than 60 minutes in 24 hours, we suggest getting a $15 day pass, which would be $15 for a regular bike for the first hour or $27 for an electric bike for the first hour.
If you plan on using electric bikes more than two times in a month we suggest getting the Indego 365Plus plan which would be $19.17 a month (or $230 a year) and includes two daily electric bike rides a day without additional costs.
Check out the Indego website for even more options including discounts for Pennsylvania ACCESS cardholders.
