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So if Denver already has over twice as much bike commuter share (at 9%) as San Francisco...
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It doesn't. The SF data is for
all trips citywide (including buying groceries out in the neighborhoods), while the Denver number is only for
commute trips into downtown. Denver's all trips citywide number is
somewhere between 1-3%.
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My real question is "What is the likely ceiling for bike-share in Denver?"
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Bikeshare specifically or bike usage in general? Assuming you mean the latter, here are some key facts (from the same link as above:
1. The highest all trips bike mode share city in the US is Davis, CA with about 20%. Davis (and places like Boulder) are small college towns with drastically different commute profiles than a big city like Denver, but they *can* be proxies for what's possible with non-work trips and last-mile type trips. If you assume a good transit network and that a lot of commute trips are bike-to-transit, Davis' 20% is probably the extreme upper limit for most US cities.
2. The highest big US city is Portland with a little over 6%. Portland is marginally better than Denver at both transit and bike stuff, but it's not another universe.
3. The US numbers (including Davis and Portland) have all gone up a lot over the last decade, so while it's hard to imagine Davis-like levels in a big US city, Portland should absolutely not be considered a ceiling.
4. Looking to foreign cities, it's easy to dismiss Amsterdam's 40% as just another universe and completely non-applicable to Denver, but Christchurch's 8% seems pretty within reach (nobody would bat an eye if Portland hit that). And while I can't think of any European city as sprawly as Denver, the 11% that Euro-sprawly Helsinki gets at least tells you that you can get pretty high with post-war non-central city development. Helsinki suburbs like Espo are in the 8% range, and anything you can do there you could also do along Colorado Boulevard (if maybe not Northglenn).
So in my head, something like 10% is a good goal for most big US cities. It's hard but possible.