Rock Ventures/Quicken Loans employees have a new way to cruise around town. Quicken has partnered with
Zagster, a Massachusetts-based bike sharing company, to bring bike sharing to downtown Detroit. Zagster has a Detroit connection in
Fontinalis Partners, Bill Ford's venture capital company that is one of the startup's investors.
The good news: there is now a bike sharing program in downtown Detroit. The bad news: it's only available to employees of the Quicken family of companies – all 9,200 of them.
However, if this program performs well with employees, Quicken is using it to vet a larger program that would extend into other parts of the city in collaboration with other entities.
About a year ago Wayne State University started investigating a city bike sharing system for the greater downtown area, hiring a consultant and initiating the public dialogue. Quicken was equally interested, but after finding out the significant investment of time and money required to build such a system from the ground up, they decided to partner with Zagster. "We wanted to get it up and running fast," says David Carroll, self-titled "Vice President of Miscellaneous Stuff" with Rock Ventures/Quicken Loans. "It was already April and we had 1,000 paid interns coming down here this year. We wanted to get something running, get some excitement for it, see people on the street, and also for the long term see if a citywide program makes sense" – particularly as we get into the winter months.
Zagster already has the bikes and racks, as well as the technology to monitor and report on usage – who is using the bikes, for how long, at what times of day, how far are they going, and so on. "This is consistent with our culture of using technology and adapting quickly," Carroll says.
Quicken owns 30 buildings downtown and is able to locate all bikes and racks on its own property. They have signed a two-year agreement with Zagster with a 90-day option out. Since the program was rolled out last week, already 1,000 Quicken family employees have signed up.
Source: David Carroll, Rock Ventures/Quicken Loans
Writer: Nicole Rupersburg
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