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ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

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Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#81

Post by jellicle »

mahyarm wrote: post #60
jellicle wrote: post #27

I love the idea, but it's doomed to failure. I live in a city with a bike-sharing system. It's deeply unprofitable and exists only at the sufferance of the city government. There are a number of flaws. Number 1 is that people who ride bikes don't rent them, they own them. For $100 anyone can purchase a bicycle that will last indefinitely and be available 24/7/365. Number 2 is that people vandalize the shit out of bic…

I know of so many bike theft stories from my friends in SF, that this program is attractive because of those stories. It won't be your typical $100 bike-shaped-object and for $80/yr you can avoid all the bike theft, ownership and maintenance costs and stress.

If you check out a bike, and it disappears, you're responsible for it.

So instead of a $100 headache, you now have a $1500 headache.

You do avoid maintenance costs, of course. Which are $0/year for many bicyclists.

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#82

Post by koji »

gojomo wrote: post #61

Clearly, the time is almost right for my 'next wave' collaborative consumption startups: UnterCab : the Uber for pedicabs and piggyback-rides SmallBearings : the RelayRides for rollerskates & skateboards Hoparound : that seldom-used pogostick doesn't have to be gathering dust anymore

Love it. Money should be thrown at these ideas like it's going out of style. Will the pogosticks needs GPS tracking and access control?

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#83

Post by philwelch »

koji wrote: post #25
koenigdavidmj wrote: post #2

Puget Sound Bike Share ( http://pugetsoundbikeshare.org/ ) is in the early planning stages of getting something similar set up in Seattle.

Seattle is located in King County, which has a mandatory helmet law for all riders, regardless of age. Melbourne, Australia has a program with helmet laws and it has struggled to maintain ridership. This is definitely a concern. Vancouver, BC is also launching a program in a similar situation, so people are watching it closely. There is undoubtedly a solution out there, but it may take some time to see how users adop…

The concern to me is less the helmet laws and more the fact that it's not actually safe to ride bicycles in most American cities without a helmet. It's not like we have physically separated bicycle routes like Copenhagen or anything--it's a basic safety precaution.

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#84

Post by callahad »

jellicle wrote: post #27

I love the idea, but it's doomed to failure. I live in a city with a bike-sharing system. It's deeply unprofitable and exists only at the sufferance of the city government. There are a number of flaws. Number 1 is that people who ride bikes don't rent them, they own them. For $100 anyone can purchase a bicycle that will last indefinitely and be available 24/7/365. Number 2 is that people vandalize the shit out of bic…

> For $100 anyone can purchase a bicycle that will last indefinitely and be available 24/7/365.

Having a bike locked up at my apartment doesn't do me much good after walking downtown with friends. For $65, I can get an annual membership to the Minneapolis bike share program (Nice Ride MN, a Bixi system) and have bikes just waiting for me all over the city. It's awesome.

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#85

Post by kazevedo »

rsbrown wrote: post #69

Yo, ViaCycle team: stop what you're doing right now and get an email signup form deployed to your homepage ASAP. I saw the headline, read the article, got excited, landed on the homepage, looked for San Francisco on the list of programs... then left the site, disappointed. You won't get a lot of opportunities to capture customers like the one you just got (and lost) with me. Use mailchimp or something similar and you…

Problem fixed! You should be able to sign up now.

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#86

Post by leeskye »

AkThhhpppt wrote: post #39
jellicle wrote: post #27

I love the idea, but it's doomed to failure. I live in a city with a bike-sharing system. It's deeply unprofitable and exists only at the sufferance of the city government. There are a number of flaws. Number 1 is that people who ride bikes don't rent them, they own them. For $100 anyone can purchase a bicycle that will last indefinitely and be available 24/7/365. Number 2 is that people vandalize the shit out of bic…

Counterpoints: http://en.velib.paris.fr/ http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14808.aspx http://www.citybikes.se/en/ http://www.dublinbikes.ie/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixi

Don't forget Denver: http://www.denverbikesharing.org/

Denver's bike share is a blessing, especially for visitors who don't have a rental car.

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#87

Post by melvinmt »

jellicle wrote: post #27

I love the idea, but it's doomed to failure. I live in a city with a bike-sharing system. It's deeply unprofitable and exists only at the sufferance of the city government. There are a number of flaws. Number 1 is that people who ride bikes don't rent them, they own them. For $100 anyone can purchase a bicycle that will last indefinitely and be available 24/7/365. Number 2 is that people vandalize the shit out of bic…

In a world of nay-sayers, the entrepreneur is king.

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#88

Post by dotcoma »

AkThhhpppt wrote: post #39
jellicle wrote: post #27

I love the idea, but it's doomed to failure. I live in a city with a bike-sharing system. It's deeply unprofitable and exists only at the sufferance of the city government. There are a number of flaws. Number 1 is that people who ride bikes don't rent them, they own them. For $100 anyone can purchase a bicycle that will last indefinitely and be available 24/7/365. Number 2 is that people vandalize the shit out of bic…

Counterpoints: http://en.velib.paris.fr/ http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14808.aspx http://www.citybikes.se/en/ http://www.dublinbikes.ie/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixi

https://www.bicing.cat/

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#89

Post by danielweber »

anovikov wrote: post #68
jellicle wrote: post #27

I love the idea, but it's doomed to failure. I live in a city with a bike-sharing system. It's deeply unprofitable and exists only at the sufferance of the city government. There are a number of flaws. Number 1 is that people who ride bikes don't rent them, they own them. For $100 anyone can purchase a bicycle that will last indefinitely and be available 24/7/365. Number 2 is that people vandalize the shit out of bic…

Somehow car rentals do work - people don't blow up/sell/break rental cars. I can't imagine why bike rentals won't work. It will work only in the area with a lot of tourists/other visitors, because locals will buy bikes if they want to ride them.

The bike rental market is very different from car rental market. Economists have been discussing it recently. Here is one guy's take (with comments providing their own theories): http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/07/bike_rental_vs.h...

Re: ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon

#90

Post by koji »

crazygringo wrote: post #67

How are they going to deal with the fact that demand is not geographically distributed/balanced? E.g. everyone wants to ride towards downtown in the morning, so there are no bikes left elsewhere, and there isn't enough space downtown to hold all the bikes. And only 2/3 of the morning people want to ride back in the evening, because they're doing other things in the evening. IIRC, some European cities have whole truck…

Current bike share programs do require redistribution of bicycles, often as often as twice a day. In large city operations viaCycle would likely be subject to this as well, but that leaves operation costs nominal.

On university campuses we have seen the traffic to be much more free flowing, as students do not follow standard commute patterns. During standard maintenance bicycles can be moved around as needed.

We have discussed the possibility of incentivizing riders to help redistribute bicycles, although the effectiveness of this has yet to be proven.

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