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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

#111

Post by graeme »

smalter wrote: post #55
micheljansen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the success or failure depends on too many factors to just say "It won't work" based on the idea alone. I remember that just a few years ago (in 2000), Amsterdam aborted a pilot program for public bicycles, because they all got stolen or vandalised [1]. Since 2006 a new nationwide scheme is being operated by the country's largest train company and it's doing great. I currently live in London and the Barclays…

Heh, the cure sounds worse than the disease. "Make the bikes so unpleasant that no will want to steal them (or use them)." I agree that there is room for creativity here. There are so many things to try. For instance, I noticed that ViaCycle seems to be piloting on college campuses. Might it be possible to put docking stations _inside_ of academic buildings, requiring a college ID swipe to get in, and possibly being…

Have you tried them? They're quite useable. The sturdiness is great on Montreal's pothole strewn roads.

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

#112

Post by graeme »

msrpotus wrote: post #59
kazevedo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely true. Redistribution is always a hurdle, though with viaCycle's realtime data, we can do some very cool things with incentives and pricing to help the system balance itself. Bixi takes a lot of parking spots partly because finding space for large stations is difficult. By using existing bike racks, we can often put in bikes without modifying anything. Plus, although parking is lucrative, replacing room for…

Does that actually work to balance out demand enough? I know Paris tried to do the same thing but found that incentives weren't enough. Then again, that was the city government, so they may have been more constrained in terms of how large the incentives can be than you.

Incentives wouldn't have to solve the problem totally. As long as they made some users happy and redistributed some bikes, incentives would help reduce costs.

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

#113

Post by neutronicus »

rprasad wrote: post #96
jellicle wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody who bikes regularly or serious owns a $100 bike. Good bikes start at around $1500, which is why bikes are such frequent targets for theft.

My $400 bike does me well enough.

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

#114

Post by felix_faber »

kazevedo wrote: post #22
jhuckestein wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, and logistical problems like that are what gets me excited about this. In grad school I did research on a on increasing the average vehicle occupancy in cities and we took a lot of inspiration from the bike sharing programs. Have you considered offering dynamic pricing based on the likelihood that the bike will be used in the near future? I.e. riding into the city should be cheaper than riding out of the city in…

Absolutely! Dynamic pricing is something we're really excited about. It's still a young idea, but even large systems like Velib have implemented simple incentives for people who ride against traffic flow. Since our bikes always know where they are, we can be much more proactive about balancing each system. Edit: a few of us did graduate transportation research as well, your work sounds cool. Is it published anywhere?

I'm writing my master's thesis on exactly that topic. http://control.ee.ethz.ch/index.cgi?page=sada;action=details...

a) a heuristic for optimal routing of repositioning trucks based on anticipated (uncertain) future demand.

b) dynamic pricing using a model predictive control approach (receding horizon optimization on a model of customer reaction to (price) incentives).

Insanely cool stuff. And its working. A paper should come out soon..

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

#115

Post by dprice1 »

philwelch wrote: post #83
koji wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree and was really surprised to see the rider in the video not wearing a helmet, even though it is legal to do so in California if you are over 18 (it is not, however, smart). The answer is to just carry one with you-- they aren't heavy, and you can usually strap it onto a backpack when not in use.

As an aside, riding on the sidewalk in the business district of Mountain View (the video is clearly Castro @ Villa) is not actually legal (http://library.municode.com/HTML/16508/level3/PTIITHCO_CH19M...)

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

#116

Post by maartenscholl »

soperj wrote: post #76
maartenscholl wrote: post #56

Concerning the design of the bikes, I think there is still room for improvement. The designers can look at the design of the Public Transportation Bike ("OV-Fiets") in the Netherlands[1] which was a major success in a country where there already were more bikes than people before it's introduction. For a bike that is available 24 you would want a bicycle lamp on the front with a dynamo instead of just reflectors. Thi…

Why would you want a dynamo if you could just have a battery powered led?

Batteries don't last and you need access to them in order to replace them, making theft easier. There are systems that integrate a dynamo in the chassis of the bike. It's also more environmentally friendly because you provide the power for the lamp. The article mentions there already is a battery in place powered by either solar or dynamo.

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

#117

Post by koji »

schiffern wrote: post #110
koji wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>We have discussed the possibility of incentivizing riders to help redistribute bicycles, although the effectiveness of this has yet to be proven. This is almost certainly because no-one has the data or analytics yet. Seems like a very interesting problem algorithmically. Even small incentives can have dramatic effects – look at the number of under-employed who recycle aluminum cans for 5-10¢/pop. It's by far the mos…

We couldn't agree more! One of the things we're very excited about is the amount of data viaCycle's system can collect and organize. And because we're not tied to permanent infrastructure we can be flexible; adjusting to usage on demand, etc. Some of it may work, some of it may not, but we're looking forward to pushing the traditionally slow-moving transit world into the future.

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

#118

Post by graue »

rprasad wrote: post #96
jellicle wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody who bikes regularly or serious owns a $100 bike. Good bikes start at around $1500, which is why bikes are such frequent targets for theft.

Sounds like a No True Scotsman fallacy to me. I've commuted daily for years, plus occasional longer trips, on a used bike that cost $150 (plus another $100 to add lock, rear rack, fenders and lights). Maintenance may be a little bit more with a used bike, but it rides great.

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

#119

Post by gojomo »

koji wrote: post #82
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?

Your phone's accelerometer is used to charge per hop. But competitive risks include a secret self-jumping PoGoogleStick project.

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

#120

Post by rsbrown »

kazevedo wrote: post #85
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.

Done and done. Thanks for the response.
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