Zappie

Bikes can come in many different shapes sizes and weights.

Stadjer

Bike weight just isn't important unless you have to carry it upstairs a lot or you're racing on steep hills a lot. 40 pounds is perfectly all right for a city bike, if you want to make it practical for wide range of users and extra bombproof for indifferent use, it adds a few pounds.

Weight is the selling point for road bikes, there's no reason to applie that marketing logic to bike shares.

rydabent

Yes-----------I have seen several racks that have at least a couple of bikes.

ExPatTyke

There's a dockless scheme running in Bristol; I've seen the bikes parked on racks around the city centre, but very rarely seen anyone riding them. As the scheme's pretty cheap - £1 per hour or £39 for a year - I suspect the weight of the bikes might have something to do with lack of use. Bristol's a hilly city, and there are some streets with 1 in 4 slopes.

Marcus_Ti

Funny thing, just this morning one of my coworkers flashed his yearly access key for them. University employees can get a year long access key for cheap. Think he said $5 or $10 for a year.

InOmaha

Don't they worry about how hard it will be to get those heavy bikes up the hills there?


My kid is at the University and won't take her bike, because a friend of hers has had one bike stolen and the wheels of the replacement bike stolen. A bike share around the campus (and between the campuses) might get her riding. But for now it's bus and walking.

CliffordK

That is one comment I heard several times talking to people about the new bike share. Once one pulls up to a rack, and punches the lock in, then it is no longer one's personal concern. Wheels get stolen, or ?? and it is up to the city and sponsors to fix or replace.

Our system gives deep discounts for students, and did put a few around campus.

One thing, everything is oriented around short rides. < 15 minutes per ride, or < 1 hour per day???

I suppose the reality of the bike share system is that it will work for some people, and the system is essentially designed to exclude others depending on one's location and riding. Perhaps good if one is heading towards one's favorite deli for lunch (as long as someone doesn't snatch up the bike while one is eating). But, the system is almost worthless for bike commuting, except for some University students. Even so, much of the off-campus housing is excluded from the system zone.

Stadjer

I don't agree entirely. It's about the difference in bike weight and the bike is only part of the total weight, so it's about 10% weight difference. But that's both uphill and downhill, so when the hills aren't very steep that evens out for a large part.

They have more momentum, probably more because of the heavy wheels rather than the total weight and keeping momentum going is just more efficient. If it's an upright one with a lazy geometry it will keep an efficient straight line easily and limit to effort to the legs, all that upper body involvement is just a waste of energy. They also tend to be quite rigid, with low waste of effort on flexing the frame. So for it's intended use, up to 15 mph in cities with usually short and not very steep hills, a typical heavy bike might save energy compared to a light bike. For higher speeds a sportier bike is more efficient, but even that has more to do with aerodynamics and tyre friction than with weight.

Gresp15C

Maybe heavy bikes give people a feeling of security.

Marcus_Ti

Yea...theft is downright epidemic in urban areas, manager of CycleWorks had his ride stolen at YiaYias this fall. I'm lucky, I can lock my bike behind 3 RFID doors and two monitored security cams.

canklecat

A heavy bike with a low center of gravity -- compact frame, sloping top tube -- can feel more stable loaded down than a lighter bike.

That's why I still prefer my heavy Globe Carmel as an errand and grocery bike. It does feel much more stable, especially on rough roads or gravel (one grocery store I visit occasionally is accessibly only via a gravel road, unless I go miles out of my way on the paved roads). The heavy spring suspension fork is an asset when the rear rack is loaded down with 30-50 lbs of groceries (which often happens just toting cat litter and food for my three fur monsters).

I've been using my lighter Univega hybrid more often for errands, trying to decide whether to keep the Globe. But the Univega never feels quite as stable loaded down. The rigid fork front end is too light. It's harder to hoist a leg across the top tube or over the loaded rear rack.

With the Globe Carmel, even though it's not a step-through, I can roll the bike near a curb, stand on the curb and step over the top tube. With a city bike or mixte it would be even easier. No need to tip the bike to hoist a leg over a loaded rear rack and risk dumping the bike.

I don't know how many folks locally use city rental bikes for errands. It's feasible only near the docking stations, which don't exist on my end of town. And while the front racks are large enough for some groceries, not all city bikes include a rear rack/panneir. It's possible supplying a few more cargo-worthy city rental bikes along routes with access to grocery stores might encourage more folks to use 'em for errands.

One deterrent to my using bikes more often for errands is the parking and locking hassles. It's a mile round trip to and from the nearest drug store and dollar store. Hardly worth the effort to park and lock -- there's no bike rack so I have to improvise and find a suitable lamp post, rail, etc. I can probably walk about as quickly for some errands. So I usually walk unless I'm fetching cat litter/food -- although today I just hand carried the 14 lb box of cat litter since we were expecting a t-storm and hail.

But a city rental bike locking station would solve that problem. No need to mess with my own lock or finding a suitable place. Most bikes include built in locks too.

Ridefreemc

How do you comet that conclusion? Care to explain?

Oneder

That has nothing to do with the weight, but was about the comments above. It seems like these schemes are expensive, don't benefit the locals at all, and make matters worse for city parking and even for cyclists. Someone is getting quite a bit of money out of those $5,000 bicycles though.

Ridefreemc

Someone may be grossing a big profit, but it isn't the local governments. As to parking that's another story altogether, but I would suggest that in most cities we have plenty. When you add up how much of our cities are devoted to the auto it can be a surprising high amount of land. https://www.fastcompany.com/40441392...parking-spaces

There are millions of parking spaces for cars. I think a few can be given up for bicycle parking. And yes, these bicycle share programs benefit the "locals."

Oneder

You benefit from renting a bike for 100 bucks a day in a downtown area?

And corruption is not something obvious, or the people would go to jail. They can't openly directly pay politicians but they can support the 'right' ones and kickbacks are also common.

Uf you don't mind parking miles away there is plenty of parking wherever you go on the whole planet. There is a great difficulty parking downtown in virtually any city big enough for people to have heard of it.

canklecat

One incentive for bike share programs is luring businesses to settle in the area. There's a lot of competition for opportunities such as Amazon's second headquarters. Those businesses will issue a set of standards for the type of environment they want for their HQ and employees. Cities scramble to meet those standards. Bike share programs rank on the quality of life index as an indicator of how receptive an area is to fitness. That's a big deal to some prospective employers and employees.

There are differences of opinion about whether these incentives are cost effective and whether the city can sustain them in the long run, especially if the corporations they're wooing choose another location. But it's more of an informed gamble than corruption. Probably a safer bet than trying to host the next Olympics.

Our city is out of the running for the second Amazon HQ, but that doesn't mean the game is over. Local officials will just move on to luring the next fish. It won't stop the current growth phase, of which the bike share and multi-use path extensions are only a small part.

Equally important may be winning back the approval of locals who feel slighted by the emphasis on bike share and fitness amenities. I know some locals complained ceaselessly that they felt their own infrastructure was being neglected. It takes a savvy and tough politician to win over that crowd, especially the zero-growth, no-outsiders xenophobes who reminisce about the good ol' days of booming economies from oil, cattle and manufacturing, but who refuse to recognize those days are gone and the next economic boom has to come from another sector.

In that sense, a form of corruption, graft or pork barrel spending might be to trade pothole repairs for votes. But it takes an LBJ style politician to have the brass balls to pull off that kind of trick.

Oneder

You mean a few people will get rich while everyone else's taxes pay for them to get rich. And the people who paid for all this get nothing.

By corrupt local governments who care about enriching themselves and their cronies.

So they, who are not even in the same state, call the shots and delusional corrupt local politicians dance the tune. They won't bother to hire anyone locally even if they did magically arrive in eugen oregon or bumblestump texas, which is a huge laugh.

So in other words: corruption and lots of rationalizations for it.

Oneder

In principle I am not against a bike share, but I assumed this would be some kind of free service anyone can use or requiring a nominal monthly subscription. Nope! 100 bucks a day rental scheme that requires a dock and is only useful to tourists in the downtown area, paid for by the poor stupid tax payers And most likely those businesses would like for people that used to park in front of them to be able to reach them, now no one can reach them from a car. I wonder what effect that will have on their business?

My only surprise is that Elon Musk is in no way involved with all this.

CliffordK

Yes & No, at least around here.

One can either buy:

15 minutes for $1 + 10 cents a minute
or
$15 a month for up to 1 hour a day + 10 cents a minute.

If you keep the bike for 24 hours a day, then it works out to be $6 an hour, or about $143.50 a day. But say you kept it for 5 hours, it would come up to about $30.

Significantly better short rental rates for students, but they would still get slammed if they wish to ride it all day.

So, the rates are "reasonable" if one is just hopping on the bike, riding a short distance to a destination, hopping off, and locking it at a dock, especially since the "zone" is only a couple of miles to ride from one side to the other.

So, perhaps hopping on the bike to go to lunch, get friends to join a cycle commuter to go to lunch, riding to and from some bus stops, etc.

It would get expensive quickly if say I wished to grab a bike, ride it home, then bring it back the next day. Although, one might be able to park it "out of system", eat the $20 fee, then ride it back. I thought the $20 was credited on return, but I'm not seeing that anymore. Perhaps it changed. So, really, there would be no incentive to actually bring it back into the system. In fact, if it took 2 hours to ride from home to the nearest dock, it would be better to just dump the bike off at the nearby school and leave it.

Jax Rhapsody

Humana was the first to do it here and it was pretty much employee only. I rode one where you had to go.through all this crap, just to only be able to use it for a day. Their wheelbase feels really short, they are twitchy yet if there was a way to pedal a baskart, that would be these bikes(if you'be ever rode the femal LaJolla, you get it). They are slow. Since Derby is coming up, I've seen more out on them and the people that ride them... if you could shamble and shuffle on a bike, George Romero would be proud of these people. I don't know how heavy they are, when I rode it, I never picked it up, but I at the time, thought it convenient, as mine was in the shop, and I wanted to see my girlfriend at the time on the other side- 13 or so miles away- across town. They don't really hold gear unless you're a cadence master and it's ratios were not hill climb friendly. Ours has these big baskets on the handlebars and it's nice touch for something that feels like it has maybe nearly zero rake.

Ridefreemc

The post is getting off subject and quite judgmental/political. I just don't appreciate the bashing of local government. There are so many good bike plans out there and the ones in our area are not operated by the local governments. There are so many individuals (local government staff) involved in most selection processes, and very strict and transparent contractor/vender processes in place that I have found that it is very unlikely that there would be some form of kickback or graft as mentioned earlier. The elected officials are often set to approve the final recommendations from staff, but at the far end of a long public process.

This may be different in other areas of the country, but I suspect that the vast majority of local governments operate with integrity. So, these blanket statements really don't help much.

So sorry to the OP for getting offtrack on the weight discussion and question.