My City Rides

MyCityRides makes reliable transportation affordable and ownership possible for those in the workforce with limited means but unlimited potential, increasing opportunity for everyone.

MyCityRides’ lease-to-own program allows individuals working at least 20 hours a week to enroll and pay $90 a month for 36 months to own their personal scooter. This puts the cost of ownership at approximately $3 dollars a day, the same as the cost of a round trip MATA pass. For this $90 monthly fee, MyCityRides provides training, liability insurance, maintenance, safety gear, and a new scooter that will travel with the speed of traffic.

MyCityRides’ lease-to-own program allows individuals working at least 20 hours a week to enroll and pay approximately $105 a month for 36 months to own their personal scooter. This puts the cost of ownership at approximately the same as the cost of a round trip MATA pass.

For this monthly fee, MyCityRides provides training, liability insurance, maintenance, safety gear, and a new scooter that will travel with the speed of traffic.

MyCityRides provides everything applicants need to get and stay on the road safely. First, applicants are required to complete the employment and insurance verification process. Next they are enrolled in scooter school to train for the written and driving portions of the licensure process.

Once an applicant receives their class M endorsement they are often enrolled in the program and on the road within the next 48-72 hours. A Flyer commits to a 36 month contract with MyCityRides then rolls out with their new scooter and brand new safety gear. While under contract, a Flyer will make monthly payments and receive liability insurance, along with preventative maintenance from MyCityRides. Once the contracted payments are complete, Flyers graduate from the program and own their scooters outright.

Program graduates are still welcome to treat MyCityRides as their trusted maintenance partner and participate in Flyer group rides and community perks for as long as they desire.

Since launching, MyCityRides has put more than 340 Flyers on the road and grown the staff to add the bandwidth needed to recruit, service, and maintain the growing fleet. The organization has been recognized with an Innovation Award from the Memphis Business Journal and named the largest SYM dealer in the United States two years in a row.

The next big move for MyCityRides is a planned campus relocation to Summer Ave. The 1.7 acre property will house the retail shop, administration offices, maintenance and warehouse operations, and training range all in one location. The campus will be located on the borders of Binghampton, the Heights, and Berclair communities. This location will place MyCityRides in the heart of Memphis, near both the geographic center of the community and major public transportation lines, as well as in close proximity to multiple communities with need-based customer populations.

This new campus will enable MyCityRides to scale from serving 300-400 Flyers annually to serving 1,000+.

MyCityRides, is the first non-profit of its kind to address the major root issue of poverty, transportation inequality, with a program that provides empowerment through scooter ownership.

This social-entrepreneurship launched with the primary goal of putting enough scooters on the road to create critical mass and establish these vehicles as a viable way to navigate Memphis. Since its inception in 2017, MyCityRides has put more than 340 individuals through the program and demand is returning to pre-pandemic levels.
In MyCityRides current facilities operations are limited by space, and juggling conflicting schedules for shared spaces. We project that the on-boarding and maintenance demands of our fleet will exceed our current space by late summer 2021. This Campus Project will enable MyCityRides to grow the fleet to approximately 900 scooters active in a given year. The anticipated revenues from a fleet this size will cover the cost of purchasing the new scooters required by the market in a given year, creating a cycle that will help offset a significant cost to operations.

Expanding to the Summer Avenue campus will also reduce the logistical demands of accessing off-site inventory increasing the bandwidth of the staff and allowing us to schedule scooter schools as needed to meet demand of the market and on-board applicants more efficiently.
This campus will be the “forever home” of MyCityRides in Memphis and an anchor for development momentum in the Summer Avenue corridor.