[moltar]

Bixi bike rental system exists for many years now. The only city as far as I know that is not profitable is Montreal, ironically the city of bixi headquarters and where it started from. The same system, under other names, exists in other major cities around the world.

They have even more expenses and infra to support. They need to install and dismantle docking stations every season, which requires cranes and trucks in 100s of locations. They have staff that drives around and picks up bikes for repairs. They have stuff driving around and re-distributing bikes when they end up in one location (eg metro after rush hour). All of the staff gets salary, of course. Many trucks and specialized trailers had to be purchased. Lots of capital needed to run something like this.

And for scooters all they had to buy was the scooters and build an app.

[rfrey]

Bixi made a 3 or 4 year go of it in Toronto before exiting the market. So it could be that all their locations (except Montreal) are profitable because they exit markets where they are losing money (except Montreal).

If that's true it raises the interesting question about why it works in some cities and not in others, since presumably the operations by Bixi are equally competent in the various places they open.

[CydeWeys]

It could just be that bike shares aren't profitable in northerly cities with long cold winters.

[tedmiston]

Sometimes founders keep a home city alive despite being unprofitable as a symbol if nothing else. Like when clothing companies have expensive flagships in NYC that are more about marketing than being stores.