Micromobility ridership now closely matches transit use in some of the nation’s largest metros.
Divvy, the shared bike and scooter operator in Chicago, is “probably the fourth-largest transit system in Northeastern Illinois,” said David Powe, assistant commissioner for project development at the Chicago Department of Transportation.
The department oversees the Divvy bike-share system and Powe called Divvy “America’s most expansive bike-share system” with the largest service area in North America, during a July 22 webinar on Chicago’s micromobility program, ahead of the 2026 Lyft Multimodal Report released Friday.
Lyft is the operator for the Divvy system, made up of some 5,600 electric bicycles, 5,000 conventional bikes and 2,800 scooters. The system also includes 1,100 docking stations.
Meanwhile, Laura Krull, senior manager of transit and micromobility policy at Lyft Urban Solutions, noted ridership on Citi Bike, which serves parts of New York City and New Jersey, is on par with the annual ridership on the PATH train (formally known as the Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp.).
“Ridership numbers are comparable to transit, which is pretty remarkable,” Krull said during the webinar. Lyft operates Citi Bike.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Wheels, now operated by Lyft and known as Lyft Bike, could rank as the seventh largest transit operator in the region, Krull said.
The increased micromobility ridership across cities is likely the confluence of a number of factors, transportation officials said. Part of the growth reflects the maturity of the market, but also the growth and expansion of e-bikes, which can better serve the needs of commuters. Bike- and scooter-share systems are also better integrated into public transit networks, often with docking stations co-located at transit stops.
Roughly 81 percent of micromobility users say they use the service to get to or from transit, Krull said.
In Toronto, many of the new bikeshare docking stations align with where subway, light rail, or other mobility points are being developed “to make sure that we’re creating a connected journey that meets the customer where they want to be met,” said Matthew Varsava, director of bike-share and micromobility at Toronto Parking Authority, during the panel.
Part of the reason for the strong growth micromobility has shown in Chicago has to do with a shared and focused strategy from the city and Lyft, Powe said, noting one of the first steps the city took was to set aside “a major operating subsidy to help stabilize pricing, to help bring people back into Divvy, who left during the pandemic.”
The strategy was to combat the out-of-control inflation affecting so many other everyday sectors like the cost of owning and operating a car, home prices and more.
“So as everything else got more expensive, Divvy got cheaper for most people,” Powe said.
In 2025 Chicago and Lyft focused on making Divvy more affordable, accessible and available, with an annual membership frozen from 2024 at $143. Annual rates are to remain frozen “until at least January 2027,” Powe said.
New and returning members gone more than 30 days are offered a $99 introductory annual membership. Since this offer was released, more than 12,000 residents have signed up, he said, and another 19,000 have renewed at the $143 rate.
Divvy also introduced price caps for e-bikes, holding the cost of a ride between 30 and 45 minutes to the 30-minute rate for members. And unlock fees have been dropped in “equity priority areas,” which tend to have low access to mobility “and have been historically disinvested,” Powe said.
The strategy is paying off. Last year, Divvy supplied nearly 7 million rides across Chicago and Evanston, Ill., and ridership is anticipated to surpass 8 million in 2026.
Toronto supports the third-largest bike-share system across the U.S. and Canada, Varsava said. In 2025, some 7.8 million rides were taken on Lyft-supported micromobility in Toronto. By the end of 2030, the city plans to feature more than 24,000 docking points — adding another 3,000 charging docks to support about 15,000 bikes.
Toronto officials aim to evolve micromobility beyond a standalone form of transportation to one that’s an integral part of the larger mobility system.
“Bikeshare is part of a mobility service for customers, which is really trying to reimagine,” Varsava said. “Instead of thinking in a siloed perspective, it’s trying to figure out how to develop and deliver a connected journey that meets the customer in the way they want to be connected.”