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I see it as a story of success of an old idea through tech-evolution. The idea is so obvious. It is horrible that I have to lock my bike. I would much prefer no
by netrus 11y ago
I see it as a story of success of an old idea through tech-evolution. The idea is so obvious. It is horrible that I have to lock my bike. I would much prefer not to! And I would be happy to share my bike with others. I could even tolerate some low loss rate. I love to bike, and I love when other people bike. But because people, you cannot simply buy 1.000 bikes and spread them all over the city. People will abuse every system, if it is too easy to abuse. So you need some kind of control. And this control came with GPS, mobile internet, mobile cellphones and magnetic cards. I don't even know if the bikes in our Hamburg sharing system are GPS-monitored. But it's possible. And sure, I could find a way to register with fake data - but there would be some chance to get caught. This feeling of everything-is-connected, everything-is-monitorable is a strong force to make antisocial behavior less likely. I realize that sounds somehow dystopian, but on the other hand, we now have bike sharing.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWow. Yay NSA because, bike sharing. Anyway, I doubt the utility of bike sharing because there can never be enough bikes. Lots of traffic is modal at times of the day (heading to work; going shopping; heading home) so bikes end up clumped. You can't depend upon there being a bike available, so you have to be prepared to walk. That's workable in dense cities only.
- icebraining 11y agoWhy can't there be enough bikes to cover the spikes as well?
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThat would be, one bike per person. SO then what would be the point? We are no longer 'sharing' bikes.
- icebraining 11y agoJust because there are spikes, doesn't mean that no sharing can occur; e.g. people commuting from east to west at 0800, while someone else might commute in the opposite direction at 0900. Also, the commuting bikes would be available at the city centre for most of the day, allowing people who need to move around during the day to reuse them.
- justincormack 11y agoBecause the total capital cost would be very high and the marginal benefit of extra bikes very low. The same reason we don't produce larger numbers of other capital goods.
- matthewmcg 11y agoI know what you mean re: reliability, but you also can't doubt that utility to all those riders that took the bikes and left the rack empty! Matching the supply of bikes to demand is an interesting problem. The good systems try to address clumping by "re-balancing." In DC, they'd have vans that would move bikes to keep up with demand patterns.[1] Also, as you've said, integrating bike shares with alternatives (like walking or transit) mitigates the reliability issue somewhat. [1] See https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/news/2015/04/02/the-system-in-rebalance https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/news/2015/04/02/the-system-...
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI don't deny the utility of bikes. But does 'sharing' just become 'giving bikes away to early commuters'? Because essentially the same people are getting the neighborhood bikes every day.