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Comment by guitarsteve | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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