4 ms·

Dockless bike share is a thing. They had them all over the East SF bay area for a while but a contract with the existing docked bikes got rid of them in most of

by s0rce 8y ago

Dockless bike share is a thing. They had them all over the East SF bay area for a while but a contract with the existing docked bikes got rid of them in most of the areas. I think they still have them in SF. As you guessed, many people hate them but honestly, parked cars take 100x the space, just allocate some parking spaces to bikes, problem solved.

anonytrary 8y ago
I suggested elsewhere in the thread, it'd be neat if they included a fourth class in the model: hub owners, in addition to the existing classes of supplier (Bird), riders (customers) and the chargers. The hub owners would register their places (private residence, business, campus, city area, etc.) as bird hubs, and people would only be allowed to ride birds between hubs. This would solve the "trash/get-off-my-lawn" problem. The hub idea isn't feasible unless tons of people are already riding birds and creating a mess everywhere, because people probably wouldn't sign up as hub owners unless the demand was already deemed high. They are probably just ramping up usage right now until people start complaining, at which point Bird will be big enough to start issuing out hubs.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  You know bike shares with docks is a super common existing model, and dockless bike share is specifically built as an improvement to that?
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    I would imagine it would be a lot easier for civilians to host scooter waypoints at their residence. Bike docks seem like more effort, I can't seem them being a popular option for homes. At scale, the idea is that half of the houses in a neighborhood would host hubs for scooters. At high hub densities, the distinction between docked and dockless becomes negligible, however the hub solution has the added benefit of people not leaving vehicles at random locations.
    - lazyasciiart 8y ago
      I don't understand why you think anyone would do this, but I am also not sure that it would be any more legal to run a scooter rental hub at most homes than it is to put a pile of scooters on the sidewalk.
      - anonytrary 8y ago
        Sorry, why do you think it's a rental hub? It's not a rental hub, you're simply giving Bird riders consent to use your property to drop their scooters off (as opposed to them dropping their scooters off on a random person's property, which bypasses consent and is far worse). All of the rental happens between Bird and the rider, you're just giving people permission to leave scooters on your lawn. It's an opt-in rather than opt-out system, which is how it should be.
        lazyasciiart 8y ago
        It is a hub for people to collect rental bikes. You are giving people permission to use your private property only if they have a specific commercial relationship with a business that you also have a specific commercial relationship to, which has a lot of differences to residential use. I'm not an expert, but I'd be pretty stunned if e.g a standard home insurance policy was willing to cover you under those circumstances.
  - lozenge 8y ago
    There are services that will credit your account if you leave the bike in a designated dock area, but you can still leave it in other areas. This improves on docks in that the "dock" can just be a geofence with a few lines painted on the ground, whereas traditional docks are very sturdy and hence expensive. This improves on dockless in that it's a more reliable place to pick up bikes, and still gives you the freedom of leaving your bike in other places.
eli 8y ago
Shameless plug: we've got a map of dockless scooters & bikes available in cities across the US over at https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/mapping-the-impact-of-dockless-vehicles/539263/ https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/mapping-the-impact-of-d...
- s0rce 8y ago
  Neat, although I was optimistically hoping your map aggregated all the actual GPS positions of all the different brands of dockless bikes and scooters onto one map. Since all the bikes (or scooters) are effectively equivalent it would seem useful for the customer to have an aggregated map app (less so for bird/lime/whatever). Also, I wasn't aware South Lake Tahoe has scooters!

by s0rce 8y ago

anonytrary 8y ago

I suggested elsewhere in the thread, it'd be neat if they included a fourth class in the model: hub owners, in addition to the existing classes of supplier (Bird), riders (customers) and the chargers. The hub owners would register their places (private residence, business, campus, city area, etc.) as bird hubs, and people would only be allowed to ride birds between hubs. This would solve the "trash/get-off-my-lawn" problem. The hub idea isn't feasible unless tons of people are already riding birds and creating a mess everywhere, because people probably wouldn't sign up as hub owners unless the demand was already deemed high. They are probably just ramping up usage right now until people start complaining, at which point Bird will be big enough to start issuing out hubs.

lazyasciiart 8y ago
You know bike shares with docks is a super common existing model, and dockless bike share is specifically built as an improvement to that?
- anonytrary 8y ago
  I would imagine it would be a lot easier for civilians to host scooter waypoints at their residence. Bike docks seem like more effort, I can't seem them being a popular option for homes. At scale, the idea is that half of the houses in a neighborhood would host hubs for scooters. At high hub densities, the distinction between docked and dockless becomes negligible, however the hub solution has the added benefit of people not leaving vehicles at random locations.
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    I don't understand why you think anyone would do this, but I am also not sure that it would be any more legal to run a scooter rental hub at most homes than it is to put a pile of scooters on the sidewalk.
    - anonytrary 8y ago
      Sorry, why do you think it's a rental hub? It's not a rental hub, you're simply giving Bird riders consent to use your property to drop their scooters off (as opposed to them dropping their scooters off on a random person's property, which bypasses consent and is far worse). All of the rental happens between Bird and the rider, you're just giving people permission to leave scooters on your lawn. It's an opt-in rather than opt-out system, which is how it should be.
      - lazyasciiart 8y ago
        It is a hub for people to collect rental bikes. You are giving people permission to use your private property only if they have a specific commercial relationship with a business that you also have a specific commercial relationship to, which has a lot of differences to residential use. I'm not an expert, but I'd be pretty stunned if e.g a standard home insurance policy was willing to cover you under those circumstances.
- lozenge 8y ago
  There are services that will credit your account if you leave the bike in a designated dock area, but you can still leave it in other areas. This improves on docks in that the "dock" can just be a geofence with a few lines painted on the ground, whereas traditional docks are very sturdy and hence expensive. This improves on dockless in that it's a more reliable place to pick up bikes, and still gives you the freedom of leaving your bike in other places.

eli 8y ago

Shameless plug: we've got a map of dockless scooters & bikes available in cities across the US over at https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/mapping-the-impact-of-dockless-vehicles/539263/ https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/mapping-the-impact-of-d...

s0rce 8y ago
Neat, although I was optimistically hoping your map aggregated all the actual GPS positions of all the different brands of dockless bikes and scooters onto one map. Since all the bikes (or scooters) are effectively equivalent it would seem useful for the customer to have an aggregated map app (less so for bird/lime/whatever). Also, I wasn't aware South Lake Tahoe has scooters!