Operation Management: Lyft Bikeshare

Theft and Loss

Theft and loss is a major problem for the bikeshare program; these result from a number of factors, including operational mistakes and oversized fleets.

Lyft bikes exist in different statuses, and each status represents allowed behaviors for the bikes. Keeping bikes in the proper status is an operational task, however, our operator was failing to switch statuses appropriately. In addition to working to keep our operator compliant, I devised the program, and led the cross-functional effort, to auto-switch statuses based on several criteria, and then fine-tuned it after analyzing performance. This process saved over $230k in avoided losses in the San Francisco market alone, and was a feature requested, then implemented, by all markets, across rideable.

After Shelter-in-Place began during the covid-19 pandemic, I evaluated our contractor’s capabilities of meeting KPIs at various fleet sizes. I made recommendations accordingly to reduce our fleet size which has resulted in over $215K in fewer losses

Daily Management

I was responsible for reporting and tracking daily metrics and raising issues when they came up. To facilitate this, I created a report for General Managers to view the most important metrics at glance (which you can see a sample of to the left). This included rides, availability, serviceability, operational performance, among others. This report was often cited as a favorite, and most useful, among the GMs, as well as Operations Managers.

Geography

As of June 2021, all shapes created for the Bay Wheels system were maintained and created by me. I worked with cross-functional teams to ensure changes did not conflict with plans and communicated them ahead of time.

The initial boundaries were much smaller and required me to create robust geospatial analyses to determine, then gain buy-in from stakeholders within and outside the organization. From a relatively small area, I managed expansion to double our service area. The only region that we did not expand to while I was with the team, was Golden Gate Park.

Additionally, I created No Parking Zones, either prior to a problem arising, or upon request (though I would challenge these when the implementation did not make sense).

The result of these efforts has been a beautiful service area in app and, most importantly, a smooth riding experience system-wide.