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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/mont

by 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.

by lindig 11y ago

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.