Page 91 - Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities - A U4SSC deliverable

Private companies, including Uber and Dezba, had also arrived on the scene, offering residents
shiny new e-bikes and motorized scooters via slick smartphone apps. City officials soon realized that
they could not simply renew the current contract and hope for the best. Instead a new procurement
approach was needed, to find a new supplier and explore how to improve the service.

“EcoBici has transformed the image of bicycles in Mexico City. Once considered recreational, the
bike is now a true alternative mode of transport.”

María Fernanda Rivera Flores
Director of Sustainable Urban Mobility Systems, Mexico City

The approach

The city authorities began by working with the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP), a non-profit
organization devoted to procurement reform. Through its “Lift” project, OCP was able to share
examples of best practice from across the world, including the US city of Boston, which had used
a new contracting approach to improve its own bike sharing system.

After a number of workshops, a strategy emerged:

• announcing the EcoBici opportunity publicly and to a global audience;
• sharing data, including financial and usage statistics via a dedicated website; and

• designing any new service together with suppliers and the public.

On 16 December 2019, these aims and the background to the project were explained at a press
conference streamed online. Suppliers were told that all the information about the project would be
shared on a dedicated website, through which they could post any questions and receive answers.

Any old-fashioned ideas about taking officials out to lunch or “leveraging relationships” soon
evaporated.

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