71–80 of 157 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quiet, perhaps, but visually egregious. Lime bikes are seen daily abandoned and often lying on sidewalks, on grass, in fields & even on street curbs.
In my city, cars are parked everywhere, on the sides of every road, on sidewalks sometimes, now THAT is egregious!
I thought CitiBike was owned by Citi bank.
I thought CitiBike was owned by Citi bank.
How does the popularity of bikes compare to electric scooters? Anecdotally, I see a lot more Bird and Lime S scooters flying around than I do bicycles these days - and we do have docked bicycle and Lime bikes and Ofo options available in my city. Having tried many of these services, I find the electric scooters to be the most enjoyable, although the electric bikes are quite fun too and can be a better experience if y…
For me, it breaks down to: 0-2miles - Scooters (or walk), 2-5miles - Electric Bikes (or Uber), 5-15miles - Uber/Lyft It is a nice little transportation stack Uber and Lyft are fighting over.
0-1 miles: walk 1-10 miles: e-bike or bus or lyft 10-100 miles: regular bike or train > 100 miles: car
Can someone explain the economics of services like this? I just get the feeling that these bike-sharing services are running on a good sales pitch and a market which seems obvious but isn't really there. There are probably four or five competing services in my city and yet I have never actually seen a single person actually riding them. There are certainly people riding bikes but it's always their own bike. Complicat…
> There's a pretty narrow window between a distance that's too far to walk but impractical to hire a car.
For places I need to go, the window is pretty large, and the bike will usually get you there faster.
> It's useless if people are unfit to drive: injury, tired, drunk, etc..
But that's not usually the case.
> It's not great for going places with friends because it doesn't take a very large group before someone isn't fit to bike. Also, for 6 people each taking a bike is $24 for a 30 min ride. Any ride sharing company will be cheaper than that, you don't have to work, and you'll get there much faster than 30 min.
Renting bikes is free assuming everyone is a member. But yes, I find biking is usually for solo transportation, not groups.
> Everyone except literally the current user of a dockless bike is going to hate them so you're limited to where the company has docking stations. They're going to be the fastest vandalized property.
NYC has docking stations almost everywhere now, and I've never once seen one vandalized.
> Anyone who's actually into riding bikes will just buy one.
I own a bike for long-distance biking and exercising. Bike share is for getting around practically and quickly, and particularly unplanned trips. I'm not a "bike person" and I'd hate to have to bring my bike everywhere I go, it's a huge hassle. Citibike being everywhere makes so many small trips massively easier and faster than any other option (you're almost always faster than a car).
> Technically you're not guaranteed a bike back from wherever you go. Although in practice you probably will since in all likelihood you're the only user of this particular service.
90% of the time it's not a problem. When it is, you just fall back to whatever you would have used otherwise.
> Your biggest market would be commuters who want to save on paying for a car/taxi/subway but people with regular destinations should reasonably just buy a mid-tier bike.
I'm not sure very many people to it to save money. In NYC, it's just so much faster and more convenient than car/taxi/subway for a lot of trips.
Also, to clarify why Citibike can be faster than car or subway, it's because you always zoom past all the cars stopped in traffic (and NYC traffic spends a lot of time being stopped), and ~match their speed otherwise. The main use case is, say, going from 23rd and 8th to 45th and 3rd... not for going from Harlem to Wall St. A 30-min walk or a 20-min drive becomes an 8-min bike ride.
If they can offer these without the inconvenient docking stations it’ll be a much more popular transportation option.
I don't agree. With permanent, known stations, a dock system can be more easily integrated into the existing public transportation network. This way the two systems can work together, and make the transportation of the region more efficient in general. These bike share startups should honestly all be to some degree folded into the public transportation network in general. It should be a mid to long term goal for buse…
That's the way it works in Helsinki. In the summer docks appear, stocked with bicycles. If you look on the local transport-company website you can see a realtime map of the trams, busses, and the number of bikes available at each dock-site.
For example on the following map you can see the number of bikes available near my house:
https://www.reittiopas.fi/pysakit/HSL:1160404
It costs €25/month to be a member, and then you can ride any bike in the city for free for 30 minutes. After that you pay, or park your bike and take another.
I've never used them, because I grew up cycling on the other side of the road and I'm a little too nerveous to cycle here, but I suspect that fear will fade in a few more years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
E-bikes are motor vehicles and can't be used on bike paths in NY state though they are street legal if registered. NYC park police actively ticket E-bikes on the west side.
In California, I'm fairly certain that if they're restricted to below 20mph they're just fine in bike lanes/paths.
If they can offer these without the inconvenient docking stations it’ll be a much more popular transportation option.
I don't agree. With permanent, known stations, a dock system can be more easily integrated into the existing public transportation network. This way the two systems can work together, and make the transportation of the region more efficient in general. These bike share startups should honestly all be to some degree folded into the public transportation network in general. It should be a mid to long term goal for buse…
Mobike (8 million bikes, founded 2015 [1]) and Ofo (3 million bikes, founded 2014 [2]) are the world's top two bike sharing operators. They also happen to be using dockless systems for their bikes, that have proven dockless systems have created nightmares in operation and maintenance cost, as well as the known oversupply and abandonment problems[3], let alone the uphill battle clashing with local governments and business in bike parking and storage. Dockless system is convenient from individual bike rider's perspective but it's more costly to operator in terms of operation(collection, redistribution etc.) and maintenance (bikes are more sophisticated due to the requirement of tracking and individually connected for rental transaction operation.)
There is a analogy to the dock system vs. dockless system debate: which ways of transportation is sustainable and logical? Private automobiles or public transit? From the micro-level, private automobiles provides convenience to individual drivers but creates much bigger problems in the macro-level, congestion, efficiency(due to vacant seats), parking etc.; whereas, public transit is always better in terms of transportation efficiency (higher number of multi-occupancy, much easier to scale up ridership, the whole point of sharing economy), easier to manage from traffic flow perspective and much cheaper in terms of operating cost both from operator's perspective and rider's perspective.
[1]: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/mobike-statistics-fa...
[2]: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/ofo-statistics/
[3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...
