Dockless shared bikes, LimeBike, Spin, and Ofo, in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / John Cook)

City planners and researchers are eager to get feedback on Seattle’s novel dockless bike sharing pilot to determine whether it is a viable mobility solution or an oversaturated fad.

The Seattle Department of Transportation launched a survey (first spotted by Curbed) to find out how riders feel about the three bike share services that arrived in their city last summer. SDOT wants to find out information about who uses bike share, how they use it, and what they don’t like about the services.

Meanwhile, the University of Washington’s Sustainable Transportation Lab just concluded its own survey of bike share users to better understand the interaction between these services and demand for public transportation.

Even GeekWire is fielding inquiries from other cities about customer reception to dockless bike share in Seattle.

Spin, LimeBike, and Ofo arrived in Seattle last July as part of a pilot program designed to help the city learn about bike sharing and collect data. Each service has thousands of bicycles on Seattle streets and all of them want to grow in the city. SDOT is now analyzing data from the companies and collecting customer feedback to determine what rules should apply to dockless bike sharing companies in Seattle long-term.

Many sustainable transportation advocates are bullish about dockless bike sharing as an environmentally-friendly way to reduce congestion in crowded cities, like Seattle. But witnessing China’s bike share bubble burst has some transportation authorities skeptical about the viability of bike-share in the U.S.

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