I think it's kind of designed as a bike share program with a minor bike-rental option to juice revenues from tourists. The annual membership is $95 (compare to

I think it's kind of designed as a bike share program with a minor bike-rental option to juice revenues from tourists. The annual membership is $95 (compare to a daily $10 / weekly $25) so if you use it with any semblance of a semi-regular basis you'll buy the yearly option, and if you're a tourist you pay the more expensive rate. It's a form of price discrimination. It is totally supposed to be about the ride-from-rack-to-rack setup. That's why there's a 30-45 minute max before they have overages (the longer time is for the annual members).