About 75 biking enthusiasts attended a public forum Monday night to hear ideas on how Nice Ride Minnesota will transition to a new way of operating — dockless bike sharing.

Nice Ride now rents 1,850 of its signature green bikes from about 200 stations throughout the Twin Cities. Those who rent the bikes are expected to return them to any Nice Ride station.

But the bike-sharing industry is quickly changing to a new dockless model, where bikes can be rented wherever users find them (usually by smartphone app) and left and locked wherever their trip ends.

Nice Ride put out a request for proposals last summer to find potential operators of the new system and to gather new ideas on how bike sharing will evolve in the Twin Cities. A new system is expected to be approved in coming weeks.

Representatives from the two finalists, New York-based Motivate International Inc. and California-based LimeBike, each made presentations and answered questions from the audience at Macalester College in St. Paul on Monday.

Both companies have similar ideas about how dockless bikes could be introduced to the Twin Cities. LimeBike, a fast-growing venture-capital-funded firm that will be in 30 markets by year's end, has only dealt with the dockless bike-sharing model, while Motivate operates docked systems similar to Nice Ride on four continents and in such cities as New York and Chicago.

Vince Tuss — Star Tribune, Star Tribune
Motivate's dockless bike. The plan is to put 10,000 bikes in the Twin Cities by 2020. New York-based Motivate is vying for the metro market.

Each company said a limited number of bikes would be available here in winter, but the bikes themselves may be modified for cold-season biking. (Nice Ride bikes are seasonal.)

The Nice Ride bikes would remain available for a period of time as the new fleet is introduced. It's likely that hubs of dockless bikes would be located near existing Nice Ride stations.

Several questions revolved around the issue of equity — making sure bikes are available for all Twin Citians, regardless of their socio-economic status. LimeBike Director of Strategic Development Gabriel Scheer said the company will roll out a lot of bikes and target areas that have not been high-volume areas historically. Scheer said LimeBike would work with cities to develop an equity plan.

Justin Ginsburgh, vice president of business development for Motivate, said the company would survey users to see what neighborhoods and communities are underserved. He suggested that a rider without a credit card may be able to use a transit pass as payment.

Other questions ranged from how bikes will be maintained and how they will be balanced so they don't end up in heavily trafficked areas. Motivate has an existing Bike Angels incentive program that rewards bikers to ride bikes to where they are needed. LimeBike said it will "prebalance" the supply of bikes — move them to a potentially busy area — to jibe with busy entertainment and sporting events as well as transit schedules.

Janet Moore • 612-673-7752 Twitter: @MooreStrib