tn_roadie

Is anyone in a city with dockless bike share or the electric scooters like Lime or Bird or Ofo? I'm interested in finding out about the experience and impact. Bird came to our city and dumped a couple of hundred scooters without asking the city government. They had 80,000 rides within a few days before the city confiscated all of them. Riders loved them and pedestrians hated them. Now the city council is working on regulations and they want to limit the numbers in the beginning. I know there several cities that have experienced these already.

dedhed

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/...day/883333002/

Milton Keynes

I don't get the Bird electric scooters. They're dockless, so who charges them up?

mr_bill

What Bird says they are doing and what Bird is doing may be two different things.

Bird *says* they are picking up the scooters every night (and recharging them) and redistributing them to where they are wanted. So, a semi-dockless system. Riders leave them pretty much wherever they want, but Bird will re-balance them to "nests" (groan) the next morning.

What they are doing is "Ubering" out the biz. Instead of being a driver for Uber, you are a charger for Bird. The app will tell chargers where to find the "birds." They bring them home, charge them up, and then the app tells the charger which "nests" (groan) need "birds" (groan) in the morning.

What could go wrong?

-mr. bill

veganbikes

We got these monstrosities dumped on us but luckily it seems like the city for the most part has gotten rid of a good portion of them but they still clutter and clog up the sidewalks. It would be nice if they took all these things and melted them down and filled the cars of the CEOs of these companies with the melted crud. It is a shame that you can leave trash on the sidewalks and get away with it these days but I guess if you are renting that trash for money it is different?

Jarvan

It was fun when I first used it. But still not very skilled. Do you have any skills?

Kapusta

UniChris

While I've rarely been there at the right hour to see them ridden, the supply of Lime Bikes along the rail trail in Yonkers just north of NYC seems to be well managed - generally parked out of the way at or near entrances that would be convenient to commuters, etc.

However the other day I saw one (more likely from the newer, smaller Bronx program) in midtown Manhattan, and on looking closely it has two broken spokes - one wrapped out of the way by someone experienced, the other newly protruding and perhaps stranding it. And also several others that are badly dented and bent.

I'm thinking their lock through the rear wheel may not be a great idea. Though I don't know if this damage happens because of people intentionally abusing them, or perhaps if there's a design error that leads to first time users accidentally trying to ride off without realizing they have to (I assume) manually move the lock out of the way after doing the electronic park of the unlock.

tcs

Dallas Texas is home to the world's most pathetic docked bike share system which neatly matches the world's most expensive and useless pedestrian/cycle bridge.

So five (5!) dockless bike share companies descended on the unsuspecting, ordinance-less city, putting as many as 12,000 bikes on Dallas's streets. Suddenly there were bikes everywhere - and being ridden everywhere, too.

The reaction was predictable. I've been unable to unearth a story of how these bikes were causing a genuine problem, but complaints abounded from non-users that they 'didn't like seeing bicycles' in the city. The few legitimate issues were with how Dallas citizens were mistreating the bikes, not with any company's policies or actions. Anyway, the Dallas old guard passed a dockless bikeshare ordinance with onerous fees - and all five companies pulled up stakes.

In response, the mayor's office complained that the bikeshare companies disposed of their property as they saw fit, rather than giving the bikes away.

Dallas, America's can't do city.

MMACH 5

Dallas was getting a lot of bad press for being the city that couldn't get a leash on unrestrained business. People were crying foul because of the high numbers of bikes. (ummm, how many cars do we have to stare at, everywhere in the city? Nobody seems to complain about those.) Now, we are the city that ran viable companies out of town. We went from having 20,000 bikes on the streets to 500.

The city council had actually started to realize that there are people in our city who want to ride bikes. They had the heat maps to show when and where people were riding and a lot of those were "last-mile" rides, getting from the train to work or home. Quite disappointing to see it go this way.

I-Like-To-Bike

Any pictures available of many of those 20,000 bikes in use by people who paid to ride them?

squirtdad

https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...siness/560747/

MMACH 5

It was a bit of an arms race between the 5 companies with bikes on the ground. I won't deny that the numbers didn't match the demand. From some of the published numbers, the companies claimed to have 90,000 active users (an active user being defined as having rented a bike on three different occasions). I don't have photos, but I saw them being ridden everyday by folks in different parts of town. Being on the board of BikeDFW, I've had meetings with several of these companies and prior to the city passing legislation and fees to squelch the bike shares, the companies had already greatly reduced the numbers of bikes on the street. They said they had collected the usage data needed to determine the number of bikes needed to make it a sustainable business model.

tcs

Yo también, amigo.

Were the bikes being parked or dumped in places that inconvenienced others? Yep, but that was by Dallas citizens, not by the bike share companies. Were a few of the bikes hung in trees or thrown in the lake? Yep, but that was by Dallas citizens, not by the bike share companies. Was the correct answer to a tiny minority of Dallas citizens appalling lack of good Southern manners really to rid the city of private enterprise quiet, silent, low impact, low cost transportation of the type the city itself has been unable to sponsor? I can't believe it was.

UniChris

$21 per bike is exorbitant? Surely these cost at least $210 each if they were expected to actually last in bike share service without incurring large local maintenance costs.

Perhaps the real lesson is that ordinances with fees to cover cleanup should be on the books first.

Absent indication that the fee is recurring, something like that is probably a wise idea to separate operators willing to make a commitment from those who are trying an idea they'll just walk away from at the slightest hint of not being a make money fast scheme.

Though at least it doesn't seem like the city was stuck cleaning up the bikes.

tcs

Well, a city could base the fee on how much the bicycle cost to build, as you suggest, or how much the bicycle was projected to earn (gross or net) for the service provider over its service lifetime, or how much social good the bicycle provided the city or just how much the city thought they could viably extract and put into their own coffers. However Dallas decided on the amount of extracted fee and additional costs of compliance with the new ordinance, it effectively swept dockless bike share from the city. Combined with Dallas' official, sponsored four year-old two station ( <-- I'm not making this up!) docked bike share effort and one walks away (you certainly won't be riding away) with the impression that the city mothers and fathers of Dallas just don't want bicycles on their streets.

I-Like-To-Bike

Does Dallas still have an ordinance requiring adults to wear helmets while riding a bicycle. That was a clear sign that the city mothers and fathers of Dallas just didn't want bicycles ridden on their streets. If the ordinance was repealed, what is keeping anyone from riding his/her bicycle on Dallas streets?

MMACH 5

The city did repeal the helmet ordinance for adults back when they installed their docked bike share. Calling it a bike-share is overstating it. There are 2 stations, less than a mile apart and both within the fair grounds.

UniChris

That's not what I suggested. What I was pointing out was that that fee wasn't really that large compared to the physical investment in a share fleet intended to last.

Startups basically operate as random ideas thrown at the wall to see what sticks. The goal is very much go big or go home - marginal successes aren't interesting, only huge wins with exploding revenue, with an implicit assumption that a lot of failing efforts will be thrown away along the way.

If you're a city deciding who is allowed to operate bike share, that is probably not what you want. Instead, you want someone with a business model that accounts for real investment in the equipment, budgets to maintain it and pick up after users who leave the bikes in problematic places, and a business plan that accounts for a relatively small difference between realistically high real-world costs and moderate sustainable prices.

I think if $21 per bike breaks the idea, the company wasn't very committed to it in the first place.

I-Like-To-Bike

Is it your opinion that a good bike-share system, dockless or otherwise, is necessary for people to be able to ride bicycles in or around Dallas, or any other city?

MMACH 5

It's not a necessity, but it certainly helps get more butts on bikes.

honcho

In the Washington DC area, there are several dockless bike companies operating, along with Bird dockless scooters. I have not and am unlikely to use any of the services but I have encountered the dockless bikes and scooters left haphazardly near and on local biking trails. I find electric scooters are somewhat annoying when encountering them as a pedestrian on sidewalks and multi-use paths but there aren't swarms of them so they're tolerable.