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Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

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Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#141

Post by jacquesc »

alpb wrote: post #43

I was in SF this week and had a chance to try this out. They have 0 (zero) e-bikes despite their app has a column to list the count. They also force you to pick up the bike from designated racks and drop-off at designated racks which is a pain in the ass. On the other hand JUMP has a fully e-bike fleet, but bikes were impossible to come by. I parked a JUMP bike that had full battery. An hour later I came back and the…

It's the SFMTA's fault. They were way too conservative with ebikes launches. Signed an exclusively contract with a company that couldn't deliver. They shut down most of the scooter shares. And Jump bikes (the best option in my opinion) hasn't been allowed to expand so they're nearly impossible to find. You can look on a map many evenings and not find a single Jump bike in SOMA.

End result, people going back to Uber/Lyft to get around. Shocking that traffic in SF is as bad as it's ever been.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#142

Post by freetime2 »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #117
g_sch wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think bikeshare programs have been very successful in cities where they are monopolies and partially run by cities. My experiences with bikeshares in NYC, London, Hamburg, Berlin, and DC have all been great. The places where they have become nuisances are largely those that have been flooded with multiple competing (usually dockless) systems, because it turns out that you don't need a large capital investment to cr…

I absolutely don’t understand why cities let their streets be literred for free by dockless bikes. I really hope at least the politicians involved got a kickback :-/.

Cities spend a lot of money trying to improve public transportation and reduce traffic. Dockless bikes and scooters can help alleviate those issues. So I can understand why a city might decide to take a hands off approach (at least initially) to let these programs get off the ground and prove out the concept.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#143

Post by chungleong »

vajaya wrote: post #81

I wonder why bike sharing is still a thing in business world. Hasn't this business venture been proved to be a fiasco in China, where user base is larger in magnitude, operation cost is residual and virtually no regulation friction, compared to the u.s.? Why do lyft, uber and others think it is viable(profitable) in the u.s.? Another thing beyond me is although the business model/development of this kind seems to be…

I think ideology plays a larger role than profit. Many people in the American financial world are Randian extremists. They like various "sharing" services because they operate outside regulatory frameworks.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#144

Post by ghaff »

nakkijono wrote: post #123
woodruffw wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you wrote off everything that was primarily used by that demographic in its early days, you'd have missed out on the personal computer, mobile phones, digital photography, and many other things that are widespread today. Not writing off! I'm in that demographic. But let's call a spade a spade. That being said, I think there's a substantial difference between PCs/cellphones/digital photography and bikesharing: th…

One issue with commuting using public transport to a large tech campus is traveling to meetings and lunch places during the day. You can walk 10-15 minutes or use the company shuttle, which takes +20 minutes to be in another building on time. If you came by car, you can drive 2-5 minutes and spend 1-5 minutes parking. With bike, it's 5 minutes door to door. Providing e-bikes for in-campus travel would do some reshapi…

Is walking 10-15 minutes (especially in a generally nice climate) really a big issue? I hear scooters and bikes mentioned a lot for those cases where people might need to travel a mile. Most of the time, I'd consider having to walk a mile or so to get from Point A to Point B a feature rather than a bug. Certainly I had to regularly walk that sort of distance around college campuses and never considered it a particularly big deal--and I didn't attend schools in nice weather locations.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#145

Post by ViViDboarder »

gbear605 wrote: post #101
untog wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An exclusivity agreement might result in the best bike share possible. I don't want to pick up one company's bike and struggle to find a dock for that same company when it comes time for dropoff. Either one company gets exclusivity, or you end up with a huge amount of public space given over to redundant infrastructure.

Or you mandate a docking system that works for all the bike companies. Commoditize the docks using public action and then the free market can actually be free to solve the rest.

There ought to be a solution somewhere in this line. This alone won’t solve it as a company could flood the docks and block out competition that way.

Having multiple companies running taxis or P2P ride apps doesn’t matter so much as users as you can still hail a cab the same way and many P2P drivers use both Lyft and Uber, creating a good user experience.

However, that’s not true for these types of bike/scooter shares. The density of bikes/scooters is not so high that I’ll be able to pick just one app and have no problem finding transportation. And, if it was, we’d be tripping over them left and right.

Even interoperability between apps would be enough to solve this.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#146

Post by esoterica »

ravenstine wrote: post #136
esoterica wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reeks of suburban provincialism. Bikes are more useful in an urban context. On an individual level they are faster because they don’t get stuck in traffic and you don’t have to pay for parking. On a macro level cars are fundamentally incompatible with density because there is literally not enough space in a city for everyone to store and drive their cars.

> This reeks of suburban provincialism. This reeks of intelligence signaling, and isn't an argument. > an urban context Yes, in an urban context, where one lives close enough to work and other conveniences, and one happens to have a shower in their office building. Most people don't live that close to work and they don't want to constantly show up to work sweaty. Bicycling certainly does work for same people, but it'…

> Yes, in an urban context,

You made the claim that bikes were obsolete in “every way”.

Most cities do not make it work with cars. In actual cities (not giant suburbs like Houston or Phoenix) a large fraction of the population does not drive or own a car.

> What do you think is going to happen in a scenario where most people are bicycling everywhere? They'd potentially spend just as much time on the road as they would in car traffic, have to constantly dodge other bikes and vehicles, and city officials would make them pay for parking.

Do you really not grasp the fact that bikes take up less space than cars. If people switched from cars to bikes there would be far less congestion.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#147

Post by mo1ok »

vajaya wrote: post #81

I wonder why bike sharing is still a thing in business world. Hasn't this business venture been proved to be a fiasco in China, where user base is larger in magnitude, operation cost is residual and virtually no regulation friction, compared to the u.s.? Why do lyft, uber and others think it is viable(profitable) in the u.s.? Another thing beyond me is although the business model/development of this kind seems to be…

FWIW, I know of a bike sharing startup that found profitably by charging cities and municipalities for the service as an urban amenity.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#148

Post by praneshp »

damnyou wrote: post #98
praneshp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the same as "What if I don't care about killing other people and just want the most space for myself". A contract is a contract.

No, a contract is not simply a contract. Contracts are only enforced when a court agrees they are enforceable. A court can declare a contract unenforceable for a variety of reasons, such as if it was ill-formed, one side was overwhelmingly more powerful, or the contract is against public policy (such as non-compete agreements in California). https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unenforceable-contra...

And in this case, Lyft is simply trying to ascertain that the courts will uphold this contract. No need to hate on them simply for taking the city to court.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#149

Post by cbhl »

arcticbull wrote: post #122
vajaya wrote: post #81

I wonder why bike sharing is still a thing in business world. Hasn't this business venture been proved to be a fiasco in China, where user base is larger in magnitude, operation cost is residual and virtually no regulation friction, compared to the u.s.? Why do lyft, uber and others think it is viable(profitable) in the u.s.? Another thing beyond me is although the business model/development of this kind seems to be…

Stepping back a sec, there's "classic" bikeshare (docked, manual), then there's (docked, electric) and (dockless, electric). Each of these has different pros and cons, though I agree docked, manual bikes aren't great. Dockless, electric is a game-changer. JUMP bikes hit 20MPH in a few seconds, take less effort than will get you sweaty (critical for meetings/commuting) and you can take the bike lane. Then the vast maj…

What I don't understand is that Lyft is suing the city of SF.

It literally should just take the Ford GoBike stations, and convert them into bike parking for only their brand of "dockless" bikes. Even if they don't have exclusivity over dockless bikes, having a monopoly over dedicated parking spots would make their brand of dockless bikes way more convenient.

Instead, scooters have taken over the city instead.

Re: Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

#150

Post by andrei_says_ »

woodruffw wrote: post #85
vajaya wrote: post #81

I wonder why bike sharing is still a thing in business world. Hasn't this business venture been proved to be a fiasco in China, where user base is larger in magnitude, operation cost is residual and virtually no regulation friction, compared to the u.s.? Why do lyft, uber and others think it is viable(profitable) in the u.s.? Another thing beyond me is although the business model/development of this kind seems to be…

My 0.02c as a Citi Bike (NYC's bikeshare) subscriber: I wouldn't be surprised if there's a modest profit to be made in bike sharing, at least in NYC. I know quite a few people with a yearly subscription (either personally or via their employer), and I would consider paying for one personally now that I've experienced their convenience. I don't know how much money Citi Bike/Motivate actually makes here, although AFAIK…

Public transport, like public roads, healthcare and education, are critical to the viability and profitability of almost any other enterprise. As such, it is logical to subsidize them and take profitability out of the equation.

This works very very well for first world Western societies.

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