Erdem Ovacik has built one of Europe’s most recognisable bike sharing companies. As co founder of Donkey Republic, he helped prove that app based bike sharing could scale across cities such as Copenhagen and Antwerp.

Today, he is focused on a different problem.

As co founder of Impact Market, Ovacik is working on the structural reason why shared bikes, scooters, car sharing, bike leasing and future autonomous services struggle to become everyday transport in European cities.

Shared mobility is still priced for a minority

Across Europe, cities invest heavily in public transport and infrastructure. At the same time, most shared mobility services are expected to survive almost entirely on what users pay per trip.

The outcome is visible in nearly every major city.

Prices remain high.
Availability is limited.
Usage concentrates among tourists and higher income residents.

In countries such as Belgium, where the average net monthly salary is around two thousand euros, paying several euros per trip twice a day does not scale for most households.

Ovacik’s position is straightforward. If cities genuinely want people to shift away from private cars, shared mobility must be supported in the same way public transport is supported.

In most European cities, between fifty and seventy percent of public transport operating costs are paid from public budgets. Shared and micromobility services receive almost none of that support.

Moving from permits and tenders to outcomes

Most cities still rely on permits and large tenders to manage bike sharing, scooters, car sharing and similar services.

These processes are slow, legally complex and difficult to adapt once they are launched. They control who can operate and how many vehicles are deployed, but they do not actively shape the outcomes cities care about, such as mode shift, congestion reduction or access to public transport.

Ovacik argues that funding should be linked directly to results.

Instead of contracting operators for fixed services, cities should define which trips create public value and fund those trips.

Not vehicles.
Not fleet sizes.
Trips.

Paying for the trips that matter

The core idea behind Impact Market is what Ovacik describes as a reverse congestion charge.

Cities already charge drivers for using scarce road space. The missing part is a mechanism that rewards people and operators for trips that support public goals.

Under this approach, cities define categories of high value trips and attach a public incentive to each category.

Typical examples include

• bike share trips to major rail stations during peak hours
• pooled car trips that replace multiple private car journeys
• cargo bike trips for school and local errands
• first and last mile connections to public transport hubs

The incentive can vary by location, time of day, vehicle type and occupancy.

How the model works in practice

Cities publish a catalogue of eligible trips and the public contribution attached to each one.

Any qualified mobility provider can participate. Bike sharing, scooter sharing, bike leasing, car sharing and carpooling operators all compete for the same users.

When a user completes a qualifying trip, the operator receives the public contribution for that trip.

The user still pays part of the price, but the public contribution reduces the cost significantly.

Ovacik believes that, for many shared mobility services, public funding could realistically cover around half of the total trip cost once the system operates at scale.

This level of support changes who can use shared mobility on a daily basis.

Where the funding can come from

The first reaction from cities is usually that there is no budget for such schemes.

Ovacik’s view is that the budgets already exist but sit in different departments.

Mobility outcomes affect more than transport policy. They also affect

• infrastructure investment needs
• congestion and parking management
• public health and preventive care
• climate and air quality targets

Impact Market proposes the creation of a dedicated public mobility impact fund that can pool resources from several departments and, where relevant, from regional or national authorities.

European level funding, including social and climate related programmes, can support early pilots.

Measuring results during a pilot

A frequent concern is that social impact takes years to evaluate.

The approach used here focuses on understanding mode shift.

For a representative share of trips, users are asked directly in the app what they would have done if the service had not been available. These responses are linked to trip data, time and location.

This allows cities to estimate how many trips replaced private car use, how many enabled public transport connections and how many created additional active travel.

During a pilot, cities can compare the public return from these trips with the cost of providing them.

Controlling abuse and price increases

Public incentives must not lead to operators raising prices or manipulating data.

Three safeguards are built into the model.

First, multiple operators compete for the same incentives. If one provider fails to translate public support into lower prices or better availability, others will capture demand.

Second, cities can impose price conditions on trips that receive public contributions. For example, a subsidised trip near a train station during peak hours may be required to be free or capped at a defined price.

Third, reporting relies on established data standards such as MDS for trip data and GBFS for availability, combined with audits and verification procedures.

A reference case that already exists

Paris is often cited by Ovacik as one of the strongest practical references in Europe.

The city has combined

• extensive protected cycling infrastructure
• a heavily used public bike sharing system
• a large scale subsidised bike leasing programme
• and publicly funded carpooling incentives

Together, these policies have produced high usage and measurable behavioural change.

However, most of these initiatives still rely on traditional tenders and programme based contracts. The ambition of Impact Market is to make such incentives continuous, data driven and open to competition.

Autonomous vehicles and trip incentives

Ovacik also sees this funding model as important for future autonomous mobility services.

Without carefully designed incentives, autonomous fleets can generate large volumes of empty circulation and low occupancy trips.

With targeted trip incentives, cities can encourage

• pooled autonomous services
• connections between suburban areas and public transport hubs
• higher vehicle occupancy rates

The same funding logic used for bikes, scooters and car sharing can be applied to autonomous services.

The hardest part is procurement culture

The main barrier is rarely political support. It is internal risk management.

Procurement and legal teams in cities are trained to avoid procedural and reputational risk. New contracting models require legal interpretation and operational change.

For this reason, early pilots backed by grants are often necessary. They allow cities to test new structures without committing large long term budgets. Once a few projects demonstrate that the model works within existing legal frameworks, adoption becomes significantly easier.

What this changes for the shared mobility sector

After more than a decade of growth, shared mobility operators still face low margins, high operational costs and limited reach among everyday commuters.

Ovacik’s experience at Donkey Republic shaped a central conclusion. Even well intentioned companies cannot deliver large scale behaviour change on their own.

Cities must move beyond regulating supply and begin purchasing outcomes.

If shared mobility is expected to replace private car use, it must be treated as part of the public transport system.

That means stable funding, continuous performance measurement and direct alignment with public policy goals.