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It feels like you're overstating the rebalancing that is done. Commuters themselves do skew the bikes one way in the morning, but on average take them back in t

by jzwinck 14y ago

It feels like you're overstating the rebalancing that is done. Commuters themselves do skew the bikes one way in the morning, but on average take them back in the evening. People who don't live in London should not be given the impression that there is a massive effort to reshuffle the bikes, because there is not. It happens, but it doesn't seem overly common, much less part of the fundamental workings of the system. I agree with others here: desolate stations could be refilled via economic incentives for riders.

freyfogle 14y ago
I'm a heavy cycle hire user and face this problem all the time. Solution seems straight-forward to me: if you park at an empty rack, or if you take a bike from a full rack your trip is free (if you are casual user) or you get small amount of credit (50p?) if you are a subscription user. My experience with cyclehire though is they always choose the most complicated path. As an example they way over engineer their authentication. Besides a password you have to answer several security questions. Feels so disproportionate.
- jzwinck 14y ago
  Someone could start by enhancing one of the several Boris Bikes apps with a "good samaritan" feature. Some people (like me) would find it fun to help out by returning a bike to a slightly different station on some trips. We'd help out for free. But as of now I don't know of any tools that encourage this. Regarding complication of hiring Boris Bikes, note that if you want to do a one-time (without an existing account) hire of two bikes, you need to insert and remove your credit card 4 or 5 times, and will get two or three pieces of paper out! The UX is just insane.
michaelt 14y ago
I'm sure the impression you get depends on the stations you use. I go through Kings Cross at 18:30 so I often see bikes being loaded - At any other station I might have got a different impression! According to [1] they have a fleet of 14 electric vans (pulling trailers of 20 bikes), 10 diesel cars (pulling the same trailers), 7 sprinter vans (16 bikes) and 3 DAF 7.5 tonne trucks (50 bikes each). But that fleet is to deal with peak demand, such as during tube strikes. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mindthegap/2011/01/moving_hire_bikes_harming_othe.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mindthegap/2011/01/moving_hire_bi...

by jzwinck 14y ago

freyfogle 14y ago

I'm a heavy cycle hire user and face this problem all the time. Solution seems straight-forward to me: if you park at an empty rack, or if you take a bike from a full rack your trip is free (if you are casual user) or you get small amount of credit (50p?) if you are a subscription user. My experience with cyclehire though is they always choose the most complicated path. As an example they way over engineer their authentication. Besides a password you have to answer several security questions. Feels so disproportionate.

jzwinck 14y ago
Someone could start by enhancing one of the several Boris Bikes apps with a "good samaritan" feature. Some people (like me) would find it fun to help out by returning a bike to a slightly different station on some trips. We'd help out for free. But as of now I don't know of any tools that encourage this. Regarding complication of hiring Boris Bikes, note that if you want to do a one-time (without an existing account) hire of two bikes, you need to insert and remove your credit card 4 or 5 times, and will get two or three pieces of paper out! The UX is just insane.

michaelt 14y ago

I'm sure the impression you get depends on the stations you use. I go through Kings Cross at 18:30 so I often see bikes being loaded - At any other station I might have got a different impression! According to [1] they have a fleet of 14 electric vans (pulling trailers of 20 bikes), 10 diesel cars (pulling the same trailers), 7 sprinter vans (16 bikes) and 3 DAF 7.5 tonne trucks (50 bikes each). But that fleet is to deal with peak demand, such as during tube strikes. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mindthegap/2011/01/moving_hire_bikes_harming_othe.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mindthegap/2011/01/moving_hire_bi...