ON A BUSY street, a Jump bike looks like a bright-red blur. It’s eye-catching, a red that’s both a color and an announcement. But to Nick Foley, head of product at the electric bike-share company, the vibrant color is not only meant to turn heads. It’s a key part of shifting the way that commuters think about bikes as an urban transportation tool.
Bikes have been part of the urban transportation system for over a century. But as traffic congestion in cities worsens, and as concerns rise about about air pollution from gas-burning cars, cities have increasingly looked for solutions to decreasing reliance on automobile transportation. A few years ago, bike-share systems emerged as a possible solution to encourage alternative modes of transportation in cities.
“Ideally, we’re pulling people into the Jump system who are not professional cyclists or even regular bicycle commuters,” Foley says. “The appeal of what we’re trying to do is that we’re getting everybody on an electric bike as a commuting tool.”
The red paint is part of Foley’s design ethos. To get “everybody” on a bike, you must first attract the attention of commuters who might not have considered a bike otherwise. But the paint’s appearance doesn’t tell the whole story. The breezy candy-apple color belies the fact that the paint has also undergone multiple chemical formulations to make it as corrosion resistant as possible. The paint performs the sleight of hand of effective design: purposeful, yet imperceptible to the user.
Jump’s most pressing challenge, though, starts when the rider gets on. Each Jump bike needs to accommodate a wide range of riders, wherever they choose to ride. So Foley faces a critical task: How do you build a single bike model that can serve the most people, in the most urban environments?
Foley’s team test rode major urban commuting bicycle types from around the world, from English roadsters to Dutch city bikes. They envisioned the bike as a combination of features from international cycling styles.
At first, Foley wanted to emulate the relaxed grip of Dutch bikes, whose handlebars curve in a sort of U-shape around the user. “That’s a very upright and stable position,” he says, which would encourage an alert posture that allows urban commuters to look out for traffic and safety signals. But Foley noticed that if a rider raises and lowers their torso, the U-shaped grip puts strain on the rider’s wrist.
It’s a small problem for an individual rider, who rides at roughly the same height for every ride. But the bike needed a handling geometry that could serve a taller rider, whose torso would sit higher on the bike, as well as a shorter rider. So Foley and his team landed on a compromise: a frame with higher handlebars that curve just slightly toward the user, lending a somewhat upright posture that feels comfortable enough for riders of most heights.
The low frame was also built to hold a long adjustable seat post. It can extend almost 12 inches; by comparison, adjustable dropper posts built for consumer mountain bikes don’t generally extend past 8 inches. Jump says that its bike can accommodate riders from 4’11” to 6’6” in height.
Kicking Into High Gear
Last month, the first fleet of 400 cherry-red Jump bikes sped through the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. It's a small city, spanning just 18.5 square miles, and the land that car infrastructures consume, like parking lots, limits the city’s opportunities for economic development, according to Martina Haggerty, special projects director at the City of Providence Department of Planning and Development.
“Bike-share is really important for us,” she says, noting that Providence started to consider implementing a bike-share program in 2009. The city saw bike-shares as a mobility solution for low-income residents (the level of income inequality in Providence is the third-highest in the country) as well as a way to meet sustainability goals. After years of trying to implement a bike-share system, a funding opportunity arose, and the city decided to sign a five-year contract with Jump.
While cities have boosted bike-shares, the competition for those citywide contracts is stiffening. Just months after Uber bought Jump, Lyft acquired bike-share operator Motivate, which already operates popular bike-share systems like GoBike in San Francisco and Citi Bike in New York City. And Lyft, Uber’s Silicon Valley arch-rival, is far from the only competition. When Jump makes its international expansion in Berlin, the e-bike brand will have to compete with international bike and scooter shares like Lime, Mobike, and Ofo. If Jump wants to keep pedaling with the competition, it has to get the design of its bike just right.
The future of Jump's bike will require continual changes at every level. To keep the bikes adaptable to changing technology, Foley says that he’s made nearly all of the parts of the bike disparate and interchangeable. So while the bike operates like an integrated system, its parts can be easily swapped out in case an updated model comes along. Foley says his team is testing another iteration of the red paint, one that is hopefully even more UV-resistant.
He has at least decided on the paint color. When he was choosing the color of the bike, he says, he took into account the color that it might fade to in 10, 20 years. When the company landed on what would become Jump’s signature scarlet, it reminded him of another feat of design that has withstood the test of time and tech. He says, grinning, “If the bike fades to match the Golden Gate Bridge, I’m gonna be really happy.”
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