Employees of Shift Transit, the company that operates Portland’s Biketown bike share system say they were given an order to chop 400 bikes in half with a table saw and throw them away.
The allegation was shared with BikePortland anonymously because the workers say they’ve been threatened with legal action if they speak out.
Lyft, the company behind Biketown, hired Shift Transit in March 2023 to operate the bike share system. Shift Transit refers to themselves as a “leader in bike share services” and manages 60,000 bicycles, scooters and other vehicles in 10 cities across America.
11 days ago a Shift Transit employee messaged BikePortland on Instagram with a troubling allegation. The employee said one worker was told to “throw away 400 bikes that could be donated or at the very least recycled for aluminum.” The worker allegedly chopped the bikes in half with a table saw and left them in a pile — even after telling their boss they felt doing so made them uncomfortable and went against their code of ethics.
“[The worker] was told they don’t have a choice,” our tipster said.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation hasn’t responded to a request for comment and I’ve so far been unable to contact Shift Transit’s Biketown general manager.
Asked to respond to the allegation, Lyft shared this statement:
“The local operations team recently decommissioned some damaged and unusable bikes. The team ensured that usable parts were salvaged for reuse, and parts that could not be reused were recycled where possible, while some parts had to be scrapped.”
That statement differs from the allegations from the Shift Transit employee (who also said they’re currently involved in a labor dispute with the company over unrelated issues).
“It’s pretty shitty they’re just throwing the bikes away, unwilling to recycle,” the employee shared. “Basically, it’s PBOT money getting wasted and all the workers are pissed about it.”
It’s unclear why bikes were decommissioned or destroyed. They could have outdated hardware or other issues that Lyft has deemed would be more expensive to fix than repair. It might also have something to do with what appears to be a new version of Biketown bikes that are about to hit the streets. Today on the BikeLoud PDX Slack channel I came across a graphic of what appears to be a new Biketown model that’s significantly different than the second generation models we have now. The photo shows a grey bike that’s known as Lyft’s “Cosmo” version currently used in New York City.
In 2021, when PBOT had a large number of outdated, first-generation Biketown bikes gathering dust in a warehouse, they opted to donate them to a bike share system in a city in Canada.
I’ll update this post if/when I can confirm any further details.
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If this is true it’s a horrible look for an already beleaguered agency.
This is one of the problems with having for-profit companies running publicly-funded programs without sufficient oversight and audits. So much waste.
The other night I saw a Biketown bike that someone had torn the battery, cell receiver and rear fender/lock off of so they could use it like a regular bike. Honestly not bad as a regular city bike. Too bad they couldn’t do something like that – though, sanctioned – and sell them off for cheap. I’d buy one for $100, it would be a great guest bike for friends visiting.
Hopefully the “table saw” part isn’t right!
I mean, technically, you can cut aluminum with a table saw. Been there, done that, pro tip: don’t do that. For this job you’d have to jack the blade sky high and remove all of the safety to get halfway through one of those bicycle frames.
On the other hand, if someone was thinking through worker injury liability as hard as they were thinking through disposed product liability, the job (and liability) would have been outsourced. That’s something for their current and aspiring employees to consider.
Table saw is not the first thing I’d think of to use for this, interesting. Why not an angle grinder or sawzall?
The story doesn’t really add up. I’m going to go with unreliable narrator here.
“Profit over People” should be Portland’s new motto.