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Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

theguardian.com

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Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#51

Post by icebraining »

tonfa wrote: post #16
steinerj wrote: post #7

I'm surprised... Cologne, Germany has dockless bike rental for more than a decade, but none of the operators complain about excessive vandalism. Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France. The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a tank'. There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable…

Maybe the difference is that one worked with the city / people to set it up, and the other mostly dumped a bunch of bikes everywhere? (and doesn't pay for any of the negative externalities that comes with it).

People have been known to throw bikes of the city-sanctioned system (Velib) in the river too. Apparently 16000 were vandalized in the first two years of operation alone.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#52

Post by retox »

jmnicolas wrote: post #2

I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent. We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhabitants. The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown from the 14th floor etc etc We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes. Tax payer money well spent?

What is the ethnic makeup of that town, if you don't mind my asking.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#53

Post by Freak_NL »

TomMarius wrote: post #49
teh_klev wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

I didn't get any new downvotes after the edit, but I don't really care about the downvotes, it's the lack of explanation that bugs me. I never edited comments like this until one month ago because there was no need, but that changed since around half a year ago when I noticed that instead of participating in a discussion, people just downvote. I don't think that the purpose of downvotes should be to disagree without…

A phrasing such as "the government sure feels like a sect" comes across as trollish. Without any substantiation such an outlandish claim seems designed exclusively to provoke people, rather than engage them in meaningful discussion.

Edit: as a consequence, people tend to downvote instead of engage with your comment, because they don't want to feed the trolls.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#54

Post by icebraining »

Ecco wrote: post #29
stinos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nuisance of those bikes Well, actually, the nuissance of the people not knowing how/where to put the bike away properly and/or being too lazy to do so or just being too selfish and not caring about others at all. Just like there's always this couple of car drivers parking where they shouldn't etc. But with these bikes it's just way easier to do. Just like it's also way easier for you or any one else to pick up the bi…

> Just like it's also way easier for you to pick up the bike and put it away 2m further if that's less annoying Which is exactly the point: I don't use those bikes, and still I have to get them out of my way. That's the nuisance. That's exactly why parking in such places is illegal in the first place. But with those rental bikes this is very hard to enforce (because it's virtually impossible for the police to tell wh…

it's virtually impossible for the police to tell who parked the bike

In theory, it should be easy: Gobee has that info. Has the police asked?

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#55

Post by boudin »

cuonic wrote: post #42
J-dawg wrote: post #19

Do “dockless” bike hire systems actually work anywhere? There seem to have been so many stories like this. Docked systems seem to work really well (e.g. London), presumably because you can’t take a bike without leaving your credit card details.

I used the Gobee.bike rental service in both Turin and Milan, and the only vandalism I encountered were two bikes that had been thrown into the Navigli canal, other than that it didn't appear to be much of a problem in Italy. For the French market maybe they need to look into attaching the device to a physical object (lamp post, docking station), other than just locking the rear wheel, to keep the oppurtunists at bay…

In this article (in french), they say that Gobee face the same issue in Italy (60% of destroyed or stolen bikes) and they're gonna stop their activity there too. They also say that Globee already had to stop their activity in Brussels for the same reasons. http://mobile.lemonde.fr/entreprises/article/2018/02/25/les-...

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#56

Post by icebraining »

Theodores wrote: post #38

I wonder who these bikes are supposed to appeal to. If you are a cyclist then you have your own bicycle, or you have a choice of bicycles. You don't leave the door with your bike left behind so you can take the heavier, possibly vandalised, possibly unavailable public transport bike in order to get to your destination later. Sometimes when catching the train I cannot take a bicycle. In theory I could hire a bike at t…

However, this I never think to do.

Well, some of us do think to do so. Until recently I had a commute that required me to take a bus that stopped 2km from my house; using the shared bikes was perfect for that connection, whereas using my bike would have required leaving it all day on the street, and taking a bus/tram was slower than walking.

I don't know about London, but the Brussels system had 1.5M rides in 2016 and more than 40 000 long-term subscribers.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#57

Post by donttrack »

rdtsc wrote: post #4
jmnicolas wrote: post #2

I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent. We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhabitants. The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown from the 14th floor etc etc We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes. Tax payer money well spent?

> stolen and found in Africa That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to impress their peers.

Was in Paris last year. I thought I was in Africa..

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#58

Post by Freak_NL »

icebraining wrote: post #54
Ecco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like it's also way easier for you to pick up the bike and put it away 2m further if that's less annoying Which is exactly the point: I don't use those bikes, and still I have to get them out of my way. That's the nuisance. That's exactly why parking in such places is illegal in the first place. But with those rental bikes this is very hard to enforce (because it's virtually impossible for the police to tell wh…

it's virtually impossible for the police to tell who parked the bike In theory, it should be easy: Gobee has that info. Has the police asked?

There are a lot of problems with fining someone after the fact. You have no proof that the last renter actually left the bicycle exactly like that (they may have left it neatly parked just a few metres away and someone purposely moved it), and the renter is quite likely to be a foreign tourist (fining them is near impossible without the benefit of a license plate like you have with a car).

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#59

Post by Freak_NL »

roddux wrote: post #22
J-dawg wrote: post #19

Do “dockless” bike hire systems actually work anywhere? There seem to have been so many stories like this. Docked systems seem to work really well (e.g. London), presumably because you can’t take a bike without leaving your credit card details.

'Dockless' bikes have recently made a large appearance in London, too. They're suddenly everywhere, little orange ones. I'm not sure if it's the same company but it's the exactly the same principle. I'm quite surprised there are any left when seemingly the bike can be freed with a small bolt cutter.

From what I've read about the type of bicycles used by these companies in the Netherlands, the bicycles themselves are pretty awful for any serious use beyond moving tourists a mile or so across a flat surface without any wind or rain. Also, if you bought a stolen one from a fence, you would be riding a branded bicycle (probably adorned with your own lock instead of the original 'smart' one) and look like a right git. They just don't appear to be very attractive to thieves.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#60

Post by icebraining »

Freak_NL wrote: post #58
icebraining wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's virtually impossible for the police to tell who parked the bike In theory, it should be easy: Gobee has that info. Has the police asked?

There are a lot of problems with fining someone after the fact. You have no proof that the last renter actually left the bicycle exactly like that (they may have left it neatly parked just a few metres away and someone purposely moved it), and the renter is quite likely to be a foreign tourist (fining them is near impossible without the benefit of a license plate like you have with a car).

You have no proof that the last renter actually left the bicycle exactly like that (they may have left it neatly parked just a few metres away and someone purposely moved it)

How so? Gobee can just check where it was the moment the renter locked it.

the renter is quite likely to be a foreign tourist (fining them is near impossible without the benefit of a license plate like you have with a car).

Gobee uses digital payment systems, which are not anonymous.

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