Bike sharing is coming to San Francisco and the Valley this Summer. http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/bike-share-coming-to-sf...
Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
21–26 of 26 posts
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#22As someone who spent a long time biking, driving, and taking public transit in Boston this is sort of laughable. A bike sharing program is a neat idea, but actually riding bikes in Boston is a terrible experience. The roads are in bad shape, there are no bike lanes, and the drivers are homicidal. Public transit in Boston certainly isn't bad, it's better than most cities I've lived in and it may very well be better th…
The rail lines (red and green respectively) go straight through Somerville and Allston. Obviously there are some places in both towns without nearby rail access, but it's sort of a stretch to claim "multiple transfers" for that ride. The roads are in no worse shape than any other northeast city (potholes are a fact of life in that climate). The drivers are agressive but broadly competant. Maybe a better complaint wou…
You simply don't take the Red Line to Park Street, change to the Green Line, and ride out to Allston. That's utterly moronic. As I recall, you would take the Red Line to Harvard Square and change to Bus 77 to Allston.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you like that, feast your eyes on http://bikes.oobrien.com
Very cool! Are you involved with that site? I see it's got a map showing bike share docks in London (by default, with a bunch of other cities available), with a circle for each docks whose size is proportional to the size of the dock, and a color ranging from blue (for empty) to red (for full), and the color scheme is configurable. And it's got a neat graph showing the number of bikes in the dock over time for the la…
I can't take any credit for the site, I'm just a fan.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the same line of reasoning many people put forward in London as well (and before that Munich when I lived there). The reality is it works well. Yes the occasional bike gets vandalized, but the system provides reliable transportation for thousands of people every day. It reminds me of the indoor smoking ban. Everywhere I live, people say "yes, that's fine in X, but it will never work here." Then it comes and i…
Our city, well a private group of enthusiasts, tried making a free bike loan program here and it failed horrible from theft and vandalism. If there is a way to record people's info and/or financial responsibility, maybe that is the key.
In my opinion your problem was being free.
Here in London it costs 45 GBP (about 65 USD) per year - you can also pay just per trip. Either way it works out to very cheap, much cheaper than the tube, bus, taxi, etc. but not free. You have to pay by card so they know who you are. Also the bikes are big bulky bikes, the parts won't fit with normal bikes. Based on the picture it looks like the Boston system is the same company, their bikes and software are used in several cities.
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#25[deleted]
Re: Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rail lines (red and green respectively) go straight through Somerville and Allston. Obviously there are some places in both towns without nearby rail access, but it's sort of a stretch to claim "multiple transfers" for that ride. The roads are in no worse shape than any other northeast city (potholes are a fact of life in that climate). The drivers are agressive but broadly competant. Maybe a better complaint wou…
You simply don't take the Red Line to Park Street, change to the Green Line, and ride out to Allston. That's utterly moronic. As I recall, you would take the Red Line to Harvard Square and change to Bus 77 to Allston.
Sigh. I wasn't doing mikeocool's transit planning, I was responding to the assertion that you have "to transfer between the bus and subway a few times" to get between Somerville and Allston. Whether it is "utterly moronic" to take the subway into Boston seems to me to be situation dependent. If there's snow on the ground and the buses are all running late, that's certainly the first choice. If it's a nice day, you'd probably decide to just walk the half mile across the river from Harvard Square.
Look: if you don't like Boston don't live there. The Bay Area is really nice too and I liked it a lot. I'm currently really liking Portland. But flaming about transit options in what AFAIK is the densest city in north america is just dumb, sorry. Carless bostonians have absolutely no grounds for complaint.