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Comment by jurassic | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden. I have seen rows of bike share bikes sitting parked taking up useful space that could have been allocated more usefully as public parking for people riding bikes they own.

I assume there must be some aspect to this business I’m not understanding if they are able to talk cities into giving them valuable street space and investors into backing them to the tune of $50M+. I’m not seeing what value they add by centralizing ownership of what is already a very inexpensive and democratic mode of transportation. What is the play here?

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"I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden."

One person's noticing or not noticing bikes being ridden is a poor way to judge the effectiveness of a city-wide program.

I know I've seen plenty of bike-share racks mostly empty of bikes. I could assume from that that these bikes are currently being used. But that's a poor way of judging too, because I don't know if they were ever full, or how many bikes were stolen or lost, etc.

The real way to judge is from data collected by the agency in charge of the bike share program itself (assuming they keep such data and that the data can be trusted), or to have some independent third party keep track of all the bikes and their use.

> I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden.

Then come to NYC and spend 60 seconds standing on a corner of an avenue in Manhattan. You'll see tons. Bikes are everywhere, and by my eyes about half are Citibikes.

Depends on where you live and the target market. I found the bike share (Bay Area Bike Share, since sold out to Ford) convenient but the bikes too clunky and heavy. I see dozens of them daily on my commute, in and out of SF. They get plenty of use here.

I have no idea where you are, but I have seen many bikes ridden all the time in London, Paris, New York, Melbourne, Lyon. Maybe you should get out of your car more?

In Seattle I’ve seen all 3 types of ridesharing bikes (LimeBike, Spin, Ofo) being used fairly frequently - especially when it’s nice outside.

Citibike in NYC is wildly successful.

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