Greenbike nears its 1 millionth ride — and it's looking forward to many more

Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Greenbike, Utah's nonprofit bike share, nears 1 million rides milestone.
• Greenbike aims to reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions while promoting healthier activities.
• It celebrated with a ride on Friday that also highlighted Salt Lake City's growing bike network.

SALT LAKE CITY — Following a robust 2025, Utah's only nonprofit bike share program finds itself nearing a major milestone, a little more than a decade in the making.

Greenbike expects to reach 1 million rides in the coming weeks.

Exactly when is difficult to tell, as the unseasonably warm weather is helping raise early interest in biking within the Wasatch Front. The organization estimates it will reach it in early June, but more sunny and warm weather might speed that timeline up, while rainier weather, especially on the weekends, could delay it, said Cameron Arellano, operations director for Greenbike.

"It's just been a big year for us, and we're really excited about going forward," added McKenzie Dodge, a communications manager for the nonprofit, as bikers began to gather around her.

Regardless of when the moment is reached, it didn't stop them, and one of its biggest supporters from celebrating the upcoming achievement. Dozens of riders gathered at Washington Square in Salt Lake City Friday evening for a celebratory ride in and around the downtown core, before returning for fun and games.

Greenbike remains Utah's only nonprofit bike share program, launching in Salt Lake City in 2013 to reduce carbon emissions and automobile traffic congestion, while also encouraging healthier activities.

It's been an interesting ride since. The organization garnered 46,000 rides in 2014, its first full year, and has slowly grown in size over time,

It reported over 130,000 trips in 2018, but that's when Greenbike started taking on competition from the private market. Companies like Bird, Lime and Spin inundated the city with electric scooters that created more transportation alternatives.

That still wasn't as bad as the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a significant dropoff in ridership. It's been a slow recovery since, but last year's figure was its highest mark since 2018. It recorded more than 88,000 rides in 2025, which was a 38% increase from the previous year.

Dodge and Salt Lake officials are thrilled by what that means for traffic, the environment and public health. Greenbike estimates that its ridership between 2013 and 2025 resulted in 6.4 million vehicle miles reduced from motor vehicle traffic, offsetting 5.8 million pounds of carbon dioxide and burning more than 79.1 million calories.

There are now several stations filled with hundreds of regular and electric bikes scattered across parts of Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake and Ogden. The nonprofit offers several price points, ranging from $3.50 for a single-day pass to $100 for an annual membership. Each pass allows a rider access to a bike for 60 minutes, or face fees of $5 per hour. But riders can exchange their bike at stations to restart the clock, too.

This year is also off to another double-digit percentage increase, which could be attributed to Utah's record-warm winter.

"Since COVID, we've seen nothing but growth," Dodge told KSL, crediting the popularity of e-bikes as a major influence on the trend.

It's become the official bike valet of the massive Kilby Block Party, taking place next week, as it seeks to promote itself more.

Friday's ride was a celebration for Greenbike, but it was also an informal way to celebrate the growth of Salt Lake City's biking infrastructure.

The city's 9-Line, 200 South, 300 West and 400 South trails and paths have all been added in recent years, seeking to reduce roadway congestion, and preliminary data is encouraging. Between the 9th & 9th District and the Central Ninth neighborhood, the 9-Line attracted more than 300,000 trips per month last year, according to the Salt Lake City Transportation Division.

Despite the city's population growing by 30% between 2015 and 2025, state transportation officials found that traffic only increased by about 14% to 15% over that time, about the same rate as the rest of the county, which only averaged a 15% growth rate.

"It's really promising and exciting for the city, because we've invested a ton in that infrastructure and those projects," said Sofia Jeremias, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake City Department of Community and Neighborhoods.

Still, the paths have faced criticism. A new law that went into effect this week bans "highway reduction strategies" on major routes throughout most of the city. It calls on the city to work with the Utah Department of Transportation on other bigger roads, while mitigating any impacts of the recent paths.

UDOT and the city have yet to identify what those could be, but the two cities have met regularly to discuss it, Jeremias told KSL.

She doesn't know how it will go, but she says Salt Lake City wants to continue investing in alternatives as it grows. That, she believes, will keep congestion low while making it safer to bike. It could also benefit entities like Greenbike along the way.

"I think we want to make sure that we keep going on that trajectory, and we don't have streets that are like Los Angeles or some of those other horror stories," Jeremias said. "(We want to provide) people with different options that will make the transportation network healthy and easy for everybody."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Utah transportationUtahEnvironmentOutdoorsSalt Lake County

Carter Williams

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Carter Williams is a reporter for KSL. He covers Salt Lake City, statewide transportation issues, outdoors, the environment and weather. He is a graduate of Southern Utah University.