Better Biking

A Free Flow subscription means that your bike is yours for as long as you want.
You don't have to return it to stations or worry about someone taking it from where you park it.Your bike will always work and will always be there when you need it.We promise.

Our Philosophy

Vision:
To make long-distance unnecessary where possible, and as fast as possible when necessary
Mission:
We serve our vision by creating multimodal networks where none currently exist and improving on existing systems to make them more efficient.
This mission is served by providing a bike subscription (℠) program that puts people in touch with community businesses, brings down the cost of cycling, gives people a means to travel sustainably, and makes communities safer.

Our Story

Free Flow was started in fall 2017 by two Northwestern students as a bike rental company for low-income students in Chicago. Many low-income students live far away from campus to save money, which ends up taking more time to get to-and-from campus. As a result, these students tend to be the least involved on-campus even though they're most likely to benefit from on-campus resources and activities.
The rental service took off.After the first year, we began looking for ways to scale the service to serve more students. We brought on other students to help market, to expand the website, and to build and maintain the bikes. We brought our data and surveys to our school's Transportation Office, Sustainability Office, and submitted grant applications that clearly showed how the program benefits low-income students and drives greater student engagement in campus life.
The idea was passed over.Going to a local incubator for advice, we were told to switch to a digital-only service or consider something along the lines of a peer-to-peer bike share service. We didn't agree, as this approach had already been tried to little success (the only examples we could find had all gone bankrupt), so we began interviewing our customers, bike shop owners, bike mechanics, and even a few bike thieves to find out where we were going wrong.
Bike subscriptions (℠) came directly from those interviews.This generally describes our business philosophy: innovation rooted in altruism, and transportation as a means to correct economic wrongs.