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Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

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Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#251

Post by stickfigure »

cjensen wrote: post #201

Abusing public bike racks to hold private rental inventory. The best bike shares build and operate their own racks with permission from the city. Others allow leaving the bike in any location. It figures Uber would attempt to get the benefits of a rack without paying for it.

Let me flip that around. You're using public bike racks for your private bicycle that I cannot use. These bikeshares are public goods, your bicycle is not.

As someone who doesn't have a private bicycle, I feel maybe you should justify to me why you get to monopolize the racks?

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#252

Post by toomanybeersies »

megablast wrote: post #243
toomanybeersies wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OBike has been a shocking failure in Australia. Not necessarily from a business perspective, but from an environmental one. Because they aren't physically locked onto anything, it has become a game to see what stupid place you can put an OBike. Recently they fished a couple of dozen out of the Yarra River. People think it's amusing to just abuse them. Half of them have the wheel lock broken off them, so they're free…

So it works badly where you live, but works well in another location you have no idea about? Thanks for your logical feedback.

If you must know, I swapped notes with my friend who lives in Singapore.

People in Singapore have much more respect for the rules and following the rules, plus the consequences are more severe for breaking the rules.

Meanwhile in Australia, bending and breaking the rules is a national sport. Also, the consequences for breaking the rules are much less severe. If a cop caught you throwing a bike into a tree or some other amusing place, they would most likely make you take it out of the tree and nothing more.

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#253

Post by abhisharma2 »

megablast wrote: post #245
anonu wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC's Citi Bike started out terribly. But they've improved in leaps and bounds since inception: Better bikes that are rarely broken (some with the really cool NuVinci continuously variable gears), better app, more up-to-date stats on available bikes and docks, good manual rebalancing and community incentives to rebalance (Bike Angels), valet at crowded stations.... to name a few improvements. They've had to raise the…

I mean, is it? You can easily buy a bike a year for that. And a decent second one at that.

Definitely not a steal, but NYC apartments are usually pretty small and potentially high (and many buildings don't have elevators).

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#254

Post by mb_72 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #188
mmahemoff wrote: post #38

There's a lot of room for improvement over the new wave of bike startups. I had shockingly bad experiences with OBike - extremely inaccurate locations for their bikes, broken seat, zero response from support when I explained I couldn't lock the bike, and apparently no restrictions in the whole country, so bikes end up all over the country as well as in people's residences or workplaces (not to mention canals and rive…

OBike has been a shocking failure in Australia. Not necessarily from a business perspective, but from an environmental one. Because they aren't physically locked onto anything, it has become a game to see what stupid place you can put an OBike. Recently they fished a couple of dozen out of the Yarra River. People think it's amusing to just abuse them. Half of them have the wheel lock broken off them, so they're free…

My wife and I visited Stockholm over the weekend, and walking around we saw two OBikes mingled in with what appeared to be otherwise well-organised and neatly piled up old Christmas trees. It was practically the only example of 'messiness' that we saw in the entire city (well, with what we could see via a 4-hour visit).

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#255

Post by dang »

megablast wrote: post #243
toomanybeersies wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OBike has been a shocking failure in Australia. Not necessarily from a business perspective, but from an environmental one. Because they aren't physically locked onto anything, it has become a game to see what stupid place you can put an OBike. Recently they fished a couple of dozen out of the Yarra River. People think it's amusing to just abuse them. Half of them have the wheel lock broken off them, so they're free…

So it works badly where you live, but works well in another location you have no idea about? Thanks for your logical feedback.

Personal swipes are not allowed in HN comments. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#256

Post by morsch »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #62
cpsempek wrote: post #44

First of all, this is great. The thing that bike share programs lack IMO is the tech and logistics savvy of a company like uber. In Santa Monica and the west side of LA we have an electric scooter service called Bird, which was started by a ex-lyft/uber excec, and it has been successfull from an outsider's perspective. The most convenient aspect of this service is that you can drop off the scooter anywhere you want,…

>The most convenient aspect of this service is that you can drop off the scooter anywhere you want, there are no designated drop off zones, which is a true solution to the last mile problem. In Dallas, there are 6 different bikeshare companies that all operate with this model of "leave the bike where ever you want when done", and it's resulted in most of the city reviling all of the bikeshare companies. The bikes end…

This seems like such an easy thing to prevent. Make people lock the bikes to something, a fence, a sign, whatever. If a bike ends up in a tree, the last person to borrow it is responsible. Give customer support some flexibility to avoid this being to harsh. Biggest downside is that it won't work with the locks currently installed on those bikes.

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#257

Post by dang »

Bendingo wrote: post #214
toomanybeersies wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OBike has been a shocking failure in Australia. Not necessarily from a business perspective, but from an environmental one. Because they aren't physically locked onto anything, it has become a game to see what stupid place you can put an OBike. Recently they fished a couple of dozen out of the Yarra River. People think it's amusing to just abuse them. Half of them have the wheel lock broken off them, so they're free…

> there is a lack of respect for property Australians lack respect not just for (other's) property but for other people and society in general. In my opinion, Australians on the whole are rude and selfish.

Nationalistic swipes aren't allowed here and we ban accounts that post them, so could you please not do that again, regardless of your experiences with Australians?

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#258

Post by zepn »

mmahemoff wrote: post #38

There's a lot of room for improvement over the new wave of bike startups. I had shockingly bad experiences with OBike - extremely inaccurate locations for their bikes, broken seat, zero response from support when I explained I couldn't lock the bike, and apparently no restrictions in the whole country, so bikes end up all over the country as well as in people's residences or workplaces (not to mention canals and rive…

> One good thing though is they apparently move bikes around in vans to help fill capacity

Much better is NYC's approach of using "Bike Angels" ( http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/02/09/new_york_s_ci... ) to redistribute. As I understand it, they still use trucks, but this is visionary compared with London's system, which simply adds more (badly driven, polluting) trucks to traffic.

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#259

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

victorhooi wrote: post #223
beedogs wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OBike seems to work a lot better in Singapore, where people have respect for property. Um... nope. It's just as bad in Singapore. https://mashable.com/2017/10/05/singapore-designated-parking... Stop blaming Australians for being fed up with companies who use littering as a business model. These shitty bikes are all over the public footpaths here and people are tired of it.

Sorry, but this is just being shifty and irresponsible. And how are they using littering as a business model? The bloody twats who are picking these up without paying and dumping them in a creek are the ones littering - it's like blaming the shopping centre for you stealing, because they had stuff for you to steal. Look at the mess Aussies have made with shopping trolleys from Coles/Woolworths. The supermarkets got s…

> The .... who are picking these up without paying and dumping them in a creek are the ones littering

Correct, though the term used for enabling this kind of bad behaviour, as the bike company is doing, is "creating an attractive nuisance" and it's not blameless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine

Re: Uber Bike – A New Way to Commute or Explore

#260

Post by briandear »

victorhooi wrote: post #223
beedogs wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OBike seems to work a lot better in Singapore, where people have respect for property. Um... nope. It's just as bad in Singapore. https://mashable.com/2017/10/05/singapore-designated-parking... Stop blaming Australians for being fed up with companies who use littering as a business model. These shitty bikes are all over the public footpaths here and people are tired of it.

Sorry, but this is just being shifty and irresponsible. And how are they using littering as a business model? The bloody twats who are picking these up without paying and dumping them in a creek are the ones littering - it's like blaming the shopping centre for you stealing, because they had stuff for you to steal. Look at the mess Aussies have made with shopping trolleys from Coles/Woolworths. The supermarkets got s…

Europe and Japan also seem to have cooler temperatures on average than Australia and the southern United States.

Southern Europe isn’t particularly bike friendly either.

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