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I think it's becoming clear that (a) bike sharing is good to have in a city. People want it. (b) neither an all public or an all private system can work as well

I think it's becoming clear that (a) bike sharing is good to have in a city. People want it. (b) neither an all public or an all private system can work as well as we'd like it to. The "all public" system means a municipality contracts a single vendor (or owns it) to build all the stations and manage everything. This is what we have where I live, dublin. It's a stagnant system. They don't add stations. Problems with stations being full/empty at certain times of the day persist indefinitely. Basically, you can feel the lack of competition. The all private system (like they have in China) is more innovative. They use technology better. You can feel the existence of competition. It's more scalable with bikes, rides and users increasing all the time. But... It makes a mess. Bikes everywhere. Companies can go bust, can chase market cap & investment. Mostly, bikes end up abandoned all over the place. This is fixable, for a local municipality that's willing to get clever and design a market. Create infrastructure, mostly it's the stations or the ability to rent space for them. Make rules, but not too many. Let competition happen within parameters.

Reason077 8y ago
In London, we have both systems. Santander Cycles, aka "Boris Bikes" which is operated by the city, as well as ofo, mobike, and (until recently?) obike. The later operate with the blessing of local councils, and are required to designate certain areas as "no parking" etc. Advantage of Boris Bikes: bigger, better quality bikes which tend to be better maintained. Usually no trouble finding docking stations with available bikes within the service area. Disadvantages: Limited service area. High cost of building docking stations means that expansion is slow. Advantages of ofo/mobike: Typically (but not always) cheaper. Can park bikes (more or less) anywhere you like. Much bigger service area. Disadvantages: Relatively crappy bikes, not fun to ride over longer distances. Not always easy to find a bike, and you might have to flip between apps to find one.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
OBike dumped some 800 bikes in Zurich without asking, or telling creating a huge mess. The problem with those bikes, apart from the fact that they look atrociously is that the quality is so bad to make them borderline unusable. I have hardly seen them in use, but there are a lot of those bikes lying around broken. There is no customer service, whatsoever and no point of contact. Aparently the manager they put in place for Switzerland left some month ago. Add to all this that according to C'T they are a massive privacy violator with all the data they suck about their renters. Lime Bike seems to fare a bit better, alas the bikes are of better quality. According to press reports they should be collected and removed. Reading about the shenanigans of that company probably at the tax payers dime. With that method, dump a shitton of crap bikes on a city and let them fend for themselves, OBike created a hellishly hostile territory for the dockless bike sharing concept.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Lots of reasons to dump on oBike. Their recent 'coin' public funding scheme was a fraud apparently - the money disappeared, investors are feeling cheated. Unsurprised to hear they polluted a river with the junk bikes, seems like a pattern.
  - Sujan 8y ago
    I asked as a comment to original post already [1], how are the ICOs and oBike directly connected? I didn't really understand that :/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440730
Chris2048 8y ago
You say "you can feel the lack of competition", but Dublin bikes are 20EUR for a year. The issue isn't competition.

Reason077 8y ago

In London, we have both systems. Santander Cycles, aka "Boris Bikes" which is operated by the city, as well as ofo, mobike, and (until recently?) obike. The later operate with the blessing of local councils, and are required to designate certain areas as "no parking" etc. Advantage of Boris Bikes: bigger, better quality bikes which tend to be better maintained. Usually no trouble finding docking stations with available bikes within the service area. Disadvantages: Limited service area. High cost of building docking stations means that expansion is slow. Advantages of ofo/mobike: Typically (but not always) cheaper. Can park bikes (more or less) anywhere you like. Much bigger service area. Disadvantages: Relatively crappy bikes, not fun to ride over longer distances. Not always easy to find a bike, and you might have to flip between apps to find one.

CaptainZapp 8y ago

OBike dumped some 800 bikes in Zurich without asking, or telling creating a huge mess. The problem with those bikes, apart from the fact that they look atrociously is that the quality is so bad to make them borderline unusable. I have hardly seen them in use, but there are a lot of those bikes lying around broken. There is no customer service, whatsoever and no point of contact. Aparently the manager they put in place for Switzerland left some month ago. Add to all this that according to C'T they are a massive privacy violator with all the data they suck about their renters. Lime Bike seems to fare a bit better, alas the bikes are of better quality. According to press reports they should be collected and removed. Reading about the shenanigans of that company probably at the tax payers dime. With that method, dump a shitton of crap bikes on a city and let them fend for themselves, OBike created a hellishly hostile territory for the dockless bike sharing concept.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Lots of reasons to dump on oBike. Their recent 'coin' public funding scheme was a fraud apparently - the money disappeared, investors are feeling cheated. Unsurprised to hear they polluted a river with the junk bikes, seems like a pattern.
- Sujan 8y ago
  I asked as a comment to original post already [1], how are the ICOs and oBike directly connected? I didn't really understand that :/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440730

Chris2048 8y ago

You say "you can feel the lack of competition", but Dublin bikes are 20EUR for a year. The issue isn't competition.