Zagster, the bike-share company behind the Pace brand, is launching what it’s calling Pace Parking. The idea is for it so serve as a parking platform for bikes, electric bikes and electric scooters. Pace is first launching these in Chicago, Austin and Bloomington, Ind., with the plan to launch in additional cities this year.
This parking platform is designed to support dockless lock-to vehicles, like JUMP bikes and Skip scooters. In partnership with cities, private landowners and local businesses, the idea is to make sure communities have proper parking infrastructure.
“With the meteoric rise of dockless bikes, ebikes and scooters in the U.S., our cities are now in the early stages of a massive transformation in how people get around — one as significant as the personal automobile in 20th century,” Zagster CEO Tim Ericson said in a statement. “Imagine a city with tens of thousands of cars and nowhere to park them — this is the huge challenge faced by every major U.S. city right now. Without mobility parking infrastructure, cities have no solution to secure the flood of new vehicles descending upon their streets and sidewalks, and we are the first company to do something about it. As the pioneer of lock-to dockless bike sharing, we’re proud to deliver the first ever universal, secure, smart parking platform for parking not just Pace bikes, but other shared bikes, personal bikes, electric scooters, and future mobility vehicles.”
Earlier this year, Zagster raised a $15 million round led by Edison Capital Partners. The startup has also unveiled its new bike parking system for both shared and personal bikes.
“Bikes have always locked to things,” Zagster CEO Tim Ericson said in a press release. “Cities have been willing to experiment with dockless bikes that don’t lock to anything because they lack sufficient bike parking and, until Pace, lacked a partner willing to install this infrastructure at no cost.”
Zagster’s Pace is one of the newer entrants to the bike-share space, which consists of a number of startups and larger companies battling for contracts with cities all over the world.
Pace, which launched in December, currently operates in Tallahassee, Florida and Knoxville, Tennessee. With the funding, Zagster plans to launch Pace in additional cities this year. Zagster also operates a bike-share solution for municipalities looking to offer their own city-specific services. Zagster, which launched in 2007, operates more than 200 bike-shares across 35 states in the U.S. This move to support multi-modal transportation options likely signals the entrance of yet another electric scooter service.
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