4 ms·

What are the economics of this? The student rate is about $10/month which seems worth it given that your bike is safe and dry. But how long would it take to rec

by lindig 11y ago

What are the economics of this? The student rate is about $10/month which seems worth it given that your bike is safe and dry. But how long would it take to recoup just the cost to build something like this? Just for comparison, a conventional parking spot in a car parking garage (with no robotic access) costs about $15.000 or $500/m^2 for the building.

aaron695 11y ago
Pretty sure it's only possible because of the way the Japanese subsidise things so much. I think building down is generally as expensive as building up. Could be $1.5 million per 200 bikes - http://www.therecord.com/news-story/3901727-a-gateway-to-underground-bicycle-parking/ http://www.therecord.com/news-story/3901727-a-gateway-to-und...
- lindig 11y ago
  That would mean about $7500 per bike or half as much as a conventional parking garage costs per car. There is no way this can be operated profitably at $10/month/bike or even $20/month/bike as it would take 30+ years to recoup the costs before running costs.
  - oh_sigh 11y ago
    You're assuming that every customer has a unique slot assigned to them. I'm sure that they have many more customers than actual bike slots, banking on the fact that at any given moment maybe only 2% of their customer base is using a given station. With that complete guess, the subscription fee would bring in $100k/month, which puts it at a reasonable timeframe to recoup costs. Also, I think that I would slightly modify the subscription fee to prevent people from parking their bikes in there long term. Like, you get 3 hours of parking for free with your subscription, and anything after that is $2/hour, or something along those lines. And non-subscribers could park for 3 hours for a one time fee of $5, plus $2/hour after that. With that in place, I could definitely seeing something like this be profitable if it is placed at a popular retail destination where it is possible to bike to.
    - lindig 11y ago
      You are right that they will sell more tickets than slots. I'm not sure this works well with a subscription though, as one would feel entitled to a spot. People most likely to use and need a subscription are commuters and those would use their spot most of the time. So I doubt that banking on only 2% of subscribers using the service would work.
      - oh_sigh 11y ago
        Well, "city bike" rentals are very similar. You pay for a subscription, but you may show up to a bike rack and find they are all taken. It would take good tuning to make sure you don't over subscribe the service, and maybe some kind of way of showing the customer what the current capacity of the station is on the web.
IshKebab 11y ago
Yeah that thing looks insanely expensive. Also what happens when it inevitably goes wrong (e.g. someone leaves pannier bag on their bike and it gets snagged)? It's seriously cool though. Someone must have had fun designing it!
kalleboo 11y ago
It could also be owned or subsidized by the train company if it gets more people to commute and buy expensive train passes (land around train stations is extremely valuable for retail already)

by lindig 11y ago

aaron695 11y ago

Pretty sure it's only possible because of the way the Japanese subsidise things so much. I think building down is generally as expensive as building up. Could be $1.5 million per 200 bikes - http://www.therecord.com/news-story/3901727-a-gateway-to-underground-bicycle-parking/ http://www.therecord.com/news-story/3901727-a-gateway-to-und...

lindig 11y ago
That would mean about $7500 per bike or half as much as a conventional parking garage costs per car. There is no way this can be operated profitably at $10/month/bike or even $20/month/bike as it would take 30+ years to recoup the costs before running costs.
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  You're assuming that every customer has a unique slot assigned to them. I'm sure that they have many more customers than actual bike slots, banking on the fact that at any given moment maybe only 2% of their customer base is using a given station. With that complete guess, the subscription fee would bring in $100k/month, which puts it at a reasonable timeframe to recoup costs. Also, I think that I would slightly modify the subscription fee to prevent people from parking their bikes in there long term. Like, you get 3 hours of parking for free with your subscription, and anything after that is $2/hour, or something along those lines. And non-subscribers could park for 3 hours for a one time fee of $5, plus $2/hour after that. With that in place, I could definitely seeing something like this be profitable if it is placed at a popular retail destination where it is possible to bike to.
  - lindig 11y ago
    You are right that they will sell more tickets than slots. I'm not sure this works well with a subscription though, as one would feel entitled to a spot. People most likely to use and need a subscription are commuters and those would use their spot most of the time. So I doubt that banking on only 2% of subscribers using the service would work.
    - oh_sigh 11y ago
      Well, "city bike" rentals are very similar. You pay for a subscription, but you may show up to a bike rack and find they are all taken. It would take good tuning to make sure you don't over subscribe the service, and maybe some kind of way of showing the customer what the current capacity of the station is on the web.

IshKebab 11y ago

Yeah that thing looks insanely expensive. Also what happens when it inevitably goes wrong (e.g. someone leaves pannier bag on their bike and it gets snagged)? It's seriously cool though. Someone must have had fun designing it!

kalleboo 11y ago

It could also be owned or subsidized by the train company if it gets more people to commute and buy expensive train passes (land around train stations is extremely valuable for retail already)