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'Bikesharing' means 'often not having a bike (your bike!) when you need it' That's a big obstacle to the idea. If you're an idealist student with no external r

'Bikesharing' means 'often not having a bike (your bike!) when you need it' That's a big obstacle to the idea. If you're an idealist student with no external repercussions to a screwed-up schedule, sure go right ahead and lose your bike. But anybody more embedded in a society is going to find bikesharing useless really fast.

asoneth 5y ago
As a counterpoint, when I commuted to an office in NYC I relied on CitiBike for the last leg of my journey, as did several thousand other office workers. I will admit there were a few days where I stood in a line outside of Penn Station to wait for a bike, and on those days biking was no faster than taking the subway. New York has a lot of commuters coming into the center which meant a shortage of bikes near train stations in the morning and a shortage of docks there at the end of the day. (They had workers in box trucks rebalancing, and eventually an scheme [1] akin to dynamic pricing to incentivize regular users to rebalance bikes themselves.) I think a larger issue preventing the success of bike share is the fact that the US is an automobile-first culture so biking is unsafe in most parts of the US. The first thing I noticed when seeing bike commuters in other countries was the number of there were old folks, kids, and women biking for transportation in the city -- unlike the US where the majority of bike commuters are adult men with a high risk tolerance. [1] https://citibikenyc.com/bike-angels https://citibikenyc.com/bike-angels
Finnucane 5y ago
That must be why usage of the urban bikeshare programs is growing so fast.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Still tiny, so a few new programs can look like explosive growth. And be honest; there are stories of bikes abandoned in piles and thrown into rivers in frustration by pedestrians. It's not been a clear winner yet?

asoneth 5y ago

As a counterpoint, when I commuted to an office in NYC I relied on CitiBike for the last leg of my journey, as did several thousand other office workers. I will admit there were a few days where I stood in a line outside of Penn Station to wait for a bike, and on those days biking was no faster than taking the subway. New York has a lot of commuters coming into the center which meant a shortage of bikes near train stations in the morning and a shortage of docks there at the end of the day. (They had workers in box trucks rebalancing, and eventually an scheme [1] akin to dynamic pricing to incentivize regular users to rebalance bikes themselves.) I think a larger issue preventing the success of bike share is the fact that the US is an automobile-first culture so biking is unsafe in most parts of the US. The first thing I noticed when seeing bike commuters in other countries was the number of there were old folks, kids, and women biking for transportation in the city -- unlike the US where the majority of bike commuters are adult men with a high risk tolerance. [1] https://citibikenyc.com/bike-angels https://citibikenyc.com/bike-angels

Finnucane 5y ago

That must be why usage of the urban bikeshare programs is growing so fast.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Still tiny, so a few new programs can look like explosive growth. And be honest; there are stories of bikes abandoned in piles and thrown into rivers in frustration by pedestrians. It's not been a clear winner yet?