Took my first VBike ride Monday afternoon, from Dallas City Hall to the newspaper — a 0.6-mile ride that felt a lot longer. Could have been the heat index dripping down my boots. Might have been the whizzing-by vehicles pinning me between the parked cars in the right-hand lane. Or maybe it was the dude standing along Wood Street who shouted something as I passed by on the yellow two-wheeler with the front-wheel basket. Sounded like, "Hey, little girl, where you going on such a pretty bike?" Hard to tell with sweat clogging my ears.

At ride's end I also had issues with the app for VBike, a rent-by-the-hour operation that is the first of several competing bike operators promising to open in the city. Hours after I locked my bike in front of the paper, the Garland-based company said I was still on my brief sojourn, and that my bike was sitting on Young Street unlocked. Spent 30 clammy minutes jacking with the bike, which was, indeed, locked. Calls, emails and messages sent through the app went unheeded by the startup; the app finally reset itself sometime overnight.

Maybe, when the weather turns less moist and suffocating, I'll give Spin a spin. And come midweek, LimeBike will be an option, too. Everywhere you turn these days, there's a brightly colored bike parked somewhere downtown, waiting to be rented (for, at most, $2 an hour) and ridden and ditched wherever. It's fantastic when it works, which, for all I know, is most of the time. (My editor had a perfect VBike ride shortly before mine ended in dripping frustration.)

In the span of a few weeks, three privately funded park-anywhere rent-a-rides figured out how to do what Downtown Dallas Inc. and City Hall couldn't get done after five years of trying. And in coming months, those same private companies could force the city to do what it promised years ago: actually build out protected bike lanes rather than slap a few emblems on the concrete and call them shared lanes, done.

At present, Dallas has a meager 15 miles worth of buffered lanes — citywide — that offer cyclists at least some protection from the vehicles with which they share the road. It's a fraction of what we were promised in the 2011 bike plan.

"I am certainly hoping this will accelerate the conversation about the need for protected bike lanes," said transportation planner Jared White, Dallas' de facto bike czar. "Dallas hasn't been a bike city, historically."

No, no it hasn't. Just five years ago, Far North Dallas council member Sandy Greyson complained about trying to pass pedalers daring to share downtown lanes. Greyson, who has since come around, sounded like everyone else behind a wheel in this city: "Talk about creating frustration in motorists."

Now, with the bike-share pouring in, the biggest downside anyone can see on the horizon is downtown gets "overwhelmed with bikes," in the words of assistant city attorney Casey Burgess. As far as worst-case scenarios go, that's pretty good.

"We're thrilled to see new models are bringing bike share to fruition," said Kourtny Garrett, DDI's CEO and president. She spent the last two years alone trying to find a company to sponsor bike-share but couldn't find anyone willing to pony up the cash for the bikes or the stations. DDI's job just got much easier: Instead of raising millions for bikes, it will now fund dozens of bike racks.

The city was caught off-guard by the sudden appearance of bicycles on almost every downtown corner and sidewalk. Only LimeBike, which eventually hopes to drop 10,000 bikes across the entire city, called City Hall with advance warning. But it's such a leap in the right direction — LimeBike plans to partner with DART, and council members want to put bikes near apartment complexes, shopping centers and trail heads — City Hall has decided it isn't going to do a thing about it for now.

"I want them to come here and compete and see what shakes out," said North Dallas council member Lee Kleinman, who chairs the council's transportation committee. "If we have good players and they're behaving, we'll let them duke it out, and hopefully the best service — or services — will win."

Next week, Kleinman's committee will be briefed on bike-sharing, and its council members will be asked how or if they want to regulate bike-sharing. Far as the city attorney's office is concerned, there's no rush to regulate. The attitude at City Hall seems to be: Let the market determine a winner, or three, then put in place some rules of the road like those recently adopted in Seattle, where city leaders demanded a few safety requirements, established parking do's and don'ts and told the companies to make sure their bikes are in proper working order.

"It's been slow, but there's a growing bike culture in Dallas," said Kleinman, whom I've seen riding his bike along the Northaven Trail. "Maybe this will finally kick off a true program."

Just five years ago, Dallas was considered the nation's worst city for cycling. And now we're worried about having too many bikes. What a long, strange, sweaty trip.