Hacker News Reader

Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

Im not paying $88 a year for some random 30 mins. When I used to bike to work I used my own bike which is lighter, faster, has no time limit on it, and not that much more expensive over the years I lived there.

The pricing scheme is not worth it.

View on HN

It's been one of my best investments (I live in SF, and work and live close to stations).

I have my own bike which I use daily, but whenever I need a quick trip covered by the stations, it's the best. Also if for any reason I leave my bike in the office overnight, I can still bike back the next day.

Overall I've saved a lot of money compared to Uber trips, and my bike doesn't get stolen when I go to places I don't want to leave it on the street.

I asked coworkers about this. Apparently a lot of older apartment buildings have no indoor parking for anything, even bikes. Carrying your bike up 2-3 stories on the stairs to your unit is super unpleasant. Locking up outside guarantees theft.

BART->bike connections are also a thing. It can be pretty hard (and not allowed) to take your own bike on BART when it's packed.

Then why does it succeed in other cities?

I've been a bicycle commuter in both London and SF. I used my own bicycle but I still had a Barclays (Santander?) Bike membership for random use. The difference in London is that it's flat, and 30 minutes gives you a pretty good range. And for longer trips you have much better transport options via tube, bus, tram, train, etc. Also because of the narrower streets and congestion, biking feels safer and driving simultaneously much less convenient. In London the cycle share scheme is a great short distance connector that regular people can use, in SF people use Uber/Lyft for the same purpose because Muni sucks.

That's a good question.

A similar service (Pronto) did not succeed in Seattle, as mentioned in the article.

I wonder if the other top cities (DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago) are actually succeeding, or if they are just subsidized by the city.

It has very high usage in DC. That said, I think it's possible tourists paying the daily rate are subsidizing the system.

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/6/9263307/bike-share-traffic

When I lived in DC, I found it was largely tourists using it. No one I knew personally used it, outside of maybe trying it out once.

It is really cool for the national mall, but riding it around the city is a little sketch unless you are very familiar with the bike routes.

The usage data shows a whole lot of commuters.

Dunno how long you've been gone, but they've done a good job adding protected bike lanes. Makes a huge difference.

You can't mention Seattle without mentioning the helmet law though. [1][2]

Portland, a few hours away, has similar (though not identical) conditions and no helmet law and seems to be doing well.[3]

[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/will... [2] http://www.citylab.com/commute/2017/01/seattle-bike-share-pr... [3]http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2017/01/18/biketown...

The helmet law in Seattle stinks. It makes using the bike share as a visitor completely un-workable. From a cost perspective, they had to build in an entirely separate module to each station with helmet vending, which I expect just gets pillaged on a regular basis.

I also suspect that Seattle is just too far on the other extreme - it's such a bike-friendly city that it's not a big hassle to lock your bike up at home, or at the office. Your biggest potential customers, daily commuters, already commute by bike.

I used Pronto in Seattle some and I think it was just once that I found no helmets in the bin. Either theft wasn't as big of a deal as you might expect, or they had to spend a lot of money replacing helmets all the time. I'm sure it also helped that the system got such little use -- not many helmets on the road at any time.

I did find it strange that helmets seemed to be an afterthought, though. Instead of accessing them with the same RFID tag you use to get a bike, there was a 4-digit keypad you used to unlock the box of helmets. The locks were frequently broken and the code was infrequently changed -- not exactly the best solution to deter theft, plus remembering the code is an extra (minor) barrier for occasional users.

In general, it's definitely possible that people were put off by the whole "wearing used helmets" thing (especially tourists), but I think it's more likely that Pronto's failure had more to do with (1) most people willing to bike to work already having their own bike, (2) lots of hills too steep to climb comfortably on such heavy bikes, and (3) very limited service area.

My own personal use was for occasional trips where driving or taking a cab would be too slow due to traffic/parking and I didn't want to worry about finding a safe, public place to lock my own bike, something that basically doesn't exist downtown. I probably used Pronto once a month on average.

Thanks for sharing that. I lived in Seattle and often walked by the Pronto bikes but didn't know that the helmet situation there was different than elsewhere.

NYC's, unlike all other bike share programs, is not subsidized, explaining the relatively higher cost of $163/yr (still a great deal if you ask me). NYC is considering subsidies so that the program expands to poorer areas farther from the core CBDs, though.

I've used cycle schemes in London, Dublin and Vilnius. I was going to provide a breakdown on how I used it in each city, but it's all about the same:

For short trips it's usually quicker than other forms of public transport, and you get excercise! Plus in the summer it's a lot more comfortable to have fresh air than be cramped on a sweaty bus or train.

The idea of these bikes isn't to run arrands or go on an afternoon trip (you usually only get 30 mins free then its around $/£/€1 per hour) but just as another way of getting from A to B.

Is the limit there longer? Here (EU) we have 1h (or maybe 2h, not sure) limit which is enough for errands. Not that it helps me much as the stations are a bit sparse around the places which are interesting to me, but I can't believe they limited time to 30 mins in SF.

Since they get over $5,000 per bike, from the company's perspective it's working in every city.

Since they are paying over $5,000 per bike, from the taxpayers perspective it looks like it's failing in every city, including DC.

As a tourist in lower Manhattan, the Citibike stations seemed to be everywhere, and I saw a number other people riding them. So I felt confident that I could rent a bike and later find a station to drop it off. Still, it was expensive.

In San Francisco, the coverage is not great (don't try to bike to tourist areas like the Castro or the Haight), and they apparently put a bunch of bikes at remote suburban train stations for political reasons. Unlike in NYC, I hardly ever see anyone riding the bikes.

Maybe it's too expensive ($88 a year versus 30 for Vélib in Paris), or maybe it's also a matter of urbanization : european city have a bigger population density than US ones, which makes it easier to commute with a bike because the distances are smaller. (In Paris for instance you can almost go from any point to any place in the city with the 45min extended plan (40€ a year)). I don't live in Paris anymore but I still go there several times a month and even now owning a Vélib pass is a no brainer.

I used the one in DC (Capital Bikeshare) for a few years.

It is good, there are plenty of stations, and the city is very plain. There is a subtle inclination actually, that helps when driving from north to south, and makes a little bit harder in the opposite direction, but nothing major. I wonder how it is in SF with all the hills as these bicycles are pretty heavy.

I had both my own bicycle (a folding bike) and a bikeshare membership. I could buy a cheap bicycle for the same price as the membership, but it was useful to make quick trips without having to worry where did I put my bicycle and how to secure my own bicycle while I'm away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com