mconlonx

Whenever I hit a major metro area, I am always interested in and heartened when I see rideshare bikes. Boston is the nearest city to which I travel on any kind of regular basis, and they have their own system. There are stations -- actually quite a few and generally conveniently located -- where one can rent and return bikes, all over the city.

But we were just out in Seattle for fun and there are two different systems going on. Lime is one (green bikes) and there's some other one out there with red bikes. Thing is, these are just all over the city, free standing (or leaned up against stuff, or laying on the ground...), no station. And they are ebikes, rather than traditional, people-powered bikes. GPS locating, apparently enables this -- download an app, find out where bikes are located, pay via phone, etc.

Great way to do it, and much better in ways. I do wonder how they get recharged and what a bummer it might be if you rent one and run out of range sometime during use.

In any case, plenty of people out riding in Seattle and environs. Learned about a new, local company out there, Rad Bikes ebikes. Lots of people riding them, the most interesting were the cargo ebikes. Saw multiples of them, with kids on the back, and mom transporting them around town. Considering the traffic and cycling infrastructure out there, great way to get around.

wipekitty

It's great to hear that Seattle has some form of bikeshare again.

I had the opportunity to use the old bikeshare system, Pronto, when I was there for work a few years ago. The problem was that the standard heavy, 7-speed bikeshare bikes were a pain to ride up Seattle's hills; I was told that there were vans that went around every night, collected the bikes from downtown, and drove them back up to Cap Hill. Ebikes seem much better suited for casual riders in that area.

cooker

A couple of years ago I went on a guided bike tour in France. It was a boat and bike cruise and they provided upright pedal bikes. The guide said that when they offered the option of electric bikes, more people crashed. It may have been because inexperienced cyclists were more likely to request the e-bikes and would have been just as prone to crashing on regular bikes, or it could be that the riders weren't used to the extra power and crashed due to going faster than they would have on a non-powered bike.

tandempower

Or maybe it was because of a correlation between thrill-seeking behavior and motorization. There's a difference between enjoying the calming experience of pedaling casually and quietly through a scenic route and zipping around like a dare-devil for kicks. This is not to say people don't do this on non-motorized bikes. Certainly mountain-biking is renowned as a thrill sport.

Still, I would guess that if you looked at 100 people who chose between e-bikes and regular bikes, there would be a higher percentage of thrill-seeking intent among the e-bike choosers. I highly doubt the opposite would be true; i.e. that more thrill-seekers would choose the manual bikes and avoid the e-bikes.

cooker

On city streets I see more and more people on electric bikes, and they come across as a bit clueless or inconsiderate around traffic behaviours and bike etiquette - more likely to go the wrong way in a bike lane, pass too close with no warning, move to the front to the line at a red light, etc. I suspect it is mostly that they are newbies, and haven't learned the accepted customs of bike culture over a longer period of time.

So similarly I suspect people who go on a group bike tour simply naively assume minimal skill is required, and maybe they don't attend to other people turning or braking in the group, or misjudge the size of passageway or something like that.