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In DC we also have JUMP (tho this Uber integration seems to be SF only), in addition to ofo, spin, mobike & limebike. And in my experience JUMP doesn't suffer from the majority of the issues the other dockless providers do. Their bikes are much higher quality and lock to something. This quality comes at a price, so the provider is more invested in bikes remaining in operation, whereas the other providers' bikes are so cheap that the companies treat them as disposable leading to most of the problems.

Re: vans -- dockless providers do this too (at least in DC, where they're required to)

Edit: and since this is HN, I've gotta point out that JUMP is also the only dockless operator in DC with an easy to use & publicly accessible API.

What can you do with the API? I don't see any information on the website about an API.

I'm not sure what the full authenticated API[0] can do, maybe the sort of integration Uber did is possible. But with the open data APIs make it easy to find all bikes currently available in the system. I've used them to add JUMP to my bike finder webapp[2] and build a little service to send myself notification of where the nearest JUMP bike is in the morning[3] because they don't yet have huge coverage in DC (working on porting this from single user + pushover to a PWA using web push).

[0] https://app.socialbicycles.com/developer/

[1] https://dc.jumpmobility.com/opendata & https://sf.jumpmobility.com/opendata

[2] https://github.com/dschep/dc-bike-finder

[3] https://github.com/dschep/JUMPStart

OBike has been a shocking failure in Australia. Not necessarily from a business perspective, but from an environmental one.

Because they aren't physically locked onto anything, it has become a game to see what stupid place you can put an OBike. Recently they fished a couple of dozen out of the Yarra River. People think it's amusing to just abuse them. Half of them have the wheel lock broken off them, so they're free to ride.

I think it's an Australian culture thing, there is a lack of respect for property. OBike seems to work a lot better in Singapore, where people have respect for property.

OBikes are wrecks in Singapore, because, it seems, oBike does not care about having staff to actually repair or maintain the bikes. We have a slightly more respectful population, perhaps, but it does not stop bikes from rusting, missing pedals or brakes, and so on. The rapid increase in the number of bikes has, thankfully, put a stop to the previous habit of taking out a part of the bike (usually pedal or seat) to put it out of action and thus "reserve" it.

Fortunately there are now so many bike startups in Singapore that you have a wide choice to pick from, and all of them are currently free. I went to the market yesterday with my mother in law, her riding a Mobike and me an Ofo, both checked out with my account.

Mobike seems the best run although I agree with the low seat problem (which is less of an issue in Asia). However, there are 3-4 different models at any one time so I suspect the company will iterate towards different models for different markets, including in size. Some of the engineering on the newer prototypes is quite interesting, and copied a few months later by Ofo, which seems to be the other company with actually active management (after a disastrous start with non-GPS-tracked bikes which were routinely "retired" by users).

As for bad parking, it is a function of enforcement. In Singapore, the companies are fined a substantial amount per bike if the government has to come and clear them. So there is apparently a sub half hour pickup time for most if you report it parked incorrectly (e.g. in a bus lane). It sounds like Australian cities have not yet put their act together in that respect. Fine the companies $500 per bike dropped in a creek and watch the problem disappear...

Oh god yes.

I live near a small creek in central melbourne. My morning commute passes usually 3-4 newly trashed O-bikes that have been ghostied into the creek, or recently fished out by a neighbour.

I recently spotted a guy with a super nice camera stalking the riverbank and jokingly asked him if he was O-bike spotting. He replied that he was, I pointed him to two submerged on the other bank and he said he was making an arts film about O-Bikes coming to life and joining together like voltron. The company had even promised to donate some trashed O-Bikes to him. At this point, I wonder what their business model is.

> At this point, I wonder what their business model is.

Same as silicon valley, keep growing to attract more and more venture capital, worry about profitability later.

Step 1: Build user base. Step 3: Profit.

It's disappointing it occurs here but it's not uniquely Australian. I see a fair amount of bikes in similar states of disposal whenever I head over to China. That said, in the CBD area of major chinese cities these things are so ubiquitous that I suspect the company just accepts a mortality rate for them.

The sibling comment is right, though; I don't know how you could run this successfully with that level of mortality rate eating into your bottom line.

My wife and I visited Stockholm over the weekend, and walking around we saw two OBikes mingled in with what appeared to be otherwise well-organised and neatly piled up old Christmas trees. It was practically the only example of 'messiness' that we saw in the entire city (well, with what we could see via a 4-hour visit).

> there is a lack of respect for property

Australians lack respect not just for (other's) property but for other people and society in general.

In my opinion, Australians on the whole are rude and selfish.

On the contrary, I find most Aussies to be helpful and friendly people. Rude, perhaps, but friendly.

I guess it depends on where you live. South Eastern and Central Melbourne is a much nicer are than Bendigo (I assume you've at least been to Bendigo given your username).

No, Aussies have a bit of a "larrikin" streak, to use the polite term.

As an Aussie, I'd term is as bordering on obnoxious and irresponsible at times - and it saddens me to write this.

Whether in Europe, South America, or Asia, everybody has a funny story about what we've allegedly done - whether it's pissing on the eternal flame in Paris, stupid stunts with climbing temples in Cambodia, trying to plank on idiotic places in Singapore hotel balconies, or just general pranks.

My parents are originally from Singapore, and like it or not, they at least have the law and order thing down pat.

Look at the mess we've made with shopping trolleys from Coles/Woolworths...

So don't blame the bike companies for us deciding to do stupid things with their property.

It's like somebody blaming a shop for graffiti, because they left their wall empty...

> My parents are originally from Singapore, and like it or not, they at least have the law and order thing down pat.

I am prepared to put up with a bit of 'larrikinism' if the alternative is a society where nobody ever questions/breaks the rules.

Like these ridiculous laws in Sydney:

- Riding without a bicycle helmet: $319 - Riding furiously, recklessly or negligently (whatever that means): $425 - Cycling on footpath and over 12 years of age: $106

I wonder if the laws are because Australians are "larrikins" or the other way around.

I think you've replied to the wrong comment? I agree with you, you can't blame obikes littering for people throwing them in rivers and on roofs.

You're damn right about Aussies (and also Brits and Kiwis) having stories about doing dumb shit overseas. It's almost a point of national pride, "hey, let me tell you about this time I disrespected an entire culture by pissing in an inappropriate location while pissed!".

> Aussies (and also Brits and Kiwis)

Really? I don't hang out with brits, kiwis, or aussies, despite being kiwi myself, but traveling around Asia people seem to love kiwis a lot.

When I first moved to Singapore I noticed every time a taxi driver asked where I was from, the moment I said New Zealand he got excited.

I tried a few times saying England, America, Australia, and if I named any of those countries it was always the same: "Oh, ok." and nothing more for the rest of the trip.

I asked a taxi driver one day and he said, along the lines of: "america's are really arrogant and tell me how to get where they want to go, british people never want to talk, and australians are really loud and rude, but new zealanders are always very polite and chatty"

I honestly don't know how much truth there is to this, it's not like I've done a scientific study or anything, but I've honestly never heard anything bad about kiwis while traveling around Asia...

> On the contrary, I find most Aussies to be helpful and friendly people.

That's everywhere in Australia, except Sydney.

Nationalistic swipes aren't allowed here and we ban accounts that post them, so could you please not do that again, regardless of your experiences with Australians?

So it works badly where you live, but works well in another location you have no idea about? Thanks for your logical feedback.

If you must know, I swapped notes with my friend who lives in Singapore.

People in Singapore have much more respect for the rules and following the rules, plus the consequences are more severe for breaking the rules.

Meanwhile in Australia, bending and breaking the rules is a national sport. Also, the consequences for breaking the rules are much less severe. If a cop caught you throwing a bike into a tree or some other amusing place, they would most likely make you take it out of the tree and nothing more.

- Riding without a bicycle helmet: $319

- Riding furiously, recklessly or negligently (whatever that means): $425

- Cycling on footpath and over 12 years of age: $106

And people wonder why Australians break laws, these are fines in NSW (which includes Sydney).

Trundling down the footpath to the shops on a Sunday morning: $425 fine! No wonder Sydney is so car centric.

Personal swipes are not allowed in HN comments. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> OBike seems to work a lot better in Singapore, where people have respect for property.

Um... nope. It's just as bad in Singapore.

https://mashable.com/2017/10/05/singapore-designated-parking...

Stop blaming Australians for being fed up with companies who use littering as a business model. These shitty bikes are all over the public footpaths here and people are tired of it.

Sorry, but this is just being shifty and irresponsible. And how are they using littering as a business model? The bloody twats who are picking these up without paying and dumping them in a creek are the ones littering - it's like blaming the shopping centre for you stealing, because they had stuff for you to steal.

Look at the mess Aussies have made with shopping trolleys from Coles/Woolworths. The supermarkets got so fed up they implemented locks on the wheels - nearly every supermarket here does this now.

The only reason the bikes are worse is because they're lighter/easier to move than trolleys, and the locks aren't as hard to overcome as for trolleys.

That, and Australia is in general very un-bike friendly. It's a cultural thing - we love our V6/V8 engines, our big SUVs, and our giant McMansions - we essentially copy the US in those traits. You compare this to say, Europe, or Japan which tend to be much more bike friendly.

> Sorry, but this is just being shifty and irresponsible. And how are they using littering as a business model?

Their business model is leaving their shitty bikes all over public property. If you want to open a food stand you need a license and to comply with regulations, you can't just setup on any footpath, but oBikes are just left everywhere.

> The .... who are picking these up without paying and dumping them in a creek are the ones littering

Correct, though the term used for enabling this kind of bad behaviour, as the bike company is doing, is "creating an attractive nuisance" and it's not blameless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine

No, this does not apply at all.

> It states that a landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by an object on the land that is likely to attract children. The doctrine is designed to protect children who are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the object, by imposing a liability on the landowner.

People stealing and vandalising bikes aren't children wandering into a hazard.

> People stealing and vandalising bikes aren't children wandering into a hazard.

There are differences, and there are similarities. I have heard "attractive nuisance" used (not in a legal context) in a looser sense that covers this case - ie. when you can legitimately ask "well, what else did you think was going to happen?"

> I have heard "attractive nuisance" used (not in a legal context)

Well, you linked to the legal context, so you'll have to excuse me for misunderstanding.

> "well, what else did you think was going to happen?"

People not stealing bikes, vandalising them and throwing them in nature? Do we really have to invent pseudo-legalities to get around the simple fact that people doing this are utter assholes (and criminals), regardless of whether the company providing these bikes have behaved perfectly?

Europe and Japan also seem to have cooler temperatures on average than Australia and the southern United States.

Southern Europe isn’t particularly bike friendly either.

The fact that the company uses littering as a business model does not excuse anyone who throws a bike in the Yarra or in the sea, that's just even worse.

"you still have the last-mile problem walking to/from the dock"

If you have to walk the last mile, how can this bike scheme be 'still the best'?

This is unfathomable to me given that in Beijing, where I live, Mobike and Ofo are primarily used for short journeys, and many of those start/end at a subway station. i.e. these bikes are primarily used for last-mile/first-mile.

Oh, and not sure about how they operate in London, but in Beijing both Mobike and Ofo have moving bikes around in vans as a key part of their operating model.

Regarding the full docks, Hamburg (StadtRAD) has a nice system: you still have to go to a dock, but if it's full, you can lock it by itself and leave it there. Having previously tried JCDecaux's system in Paris and Brussels, it was a pleasant surprise.

This is how it works in Helsinki too. Except half the time, one bike isn’t mounted properly and it thinks it’s not full. This happened enough times for me to ditch it and use my own bike, especially after the city didn’t address the feedback they had regarding the issue.

From personal experience the deal they make with the host city is usually a win-win (for the municipality and for the citizens). The experience is great, JCDecaux gets to use some billboard locations, and the citizens get a dirt cheap public bike scheme. Here in Sweden it costs something like 8 euros per year. Yes, per year.

Another interesting thing is that they have a pretty OK API https://developer.jcdecaux.com/#/opendata/vls?page=getstarte...

Oh, no argument there, I quite enjoyed using Villo, and it's really dirt cheap (not 8, but still just 30€).

That said, and while it's probably built on top of that API, Brussels has an even better API: it lets you submit a geographical area (which you can design manually on their site) and get info on all stations inside it in a single request/response, and you don't even need registration: https://opendata.bruxelles.be/explore/dataset/stations-villo...

the new system in Paris allows this now.

In addition to the other commenters phone rebuttal, for only £3 you can buy a fob that seems to work much like an oyster card for the bike system. I can't say I've tried them yet, but if it allows auto-top up like oyster, seems more convenient than even a smartphone app!

https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/santander-cycles/register-f...

The key is free if you get the £90 yearly membership. The membership was some of the best money I spent since I came to London.

I've used it, but it's another thing to carry around (admittedly small) and since you usually need the phone anyway for maps and availablity, I think I prefer the phone based QR system. Also it's a downside from a tourist's perspective.

I loved riding OBikes around Singapore when I was there for a week last year. They seemed to cluster in surprisingly useful places. However, the difficulty they are having with maintaining the fleet quickly became clear as I'd wander down the street to test bike after bike to find one that had working pedals, seat, and handlebars.

I had recently a really bad experience with a Deutsche Bahn bike in Munich. I needed a quick ride and I took really the first one. After 100m the bike almost desintegrated and to my luck, I ended up on the sidewalk and not on the adjacent street ( running with cars at full speed - heh, Mittlere Ring! ). Result: Shoulder injury, 3 weeks of spitalization. Nothing to do, since the TOS requires that you check the bike and report it if broken.

That's more a reflection on the terrible quality of Obikes bicycles. Mobike and Ofo, while not perfect, have way fewer issues in that regard. So much so that I stopped using Obike altogether.

I think the Boris Bike system is fantastic (I commute on one everyday, !£90yr!), and actually think the dock model is best.

I think this is shown by how much they get used, every dock I go by probably sees a full rotations of bikes every 2 days!

The problem with the others, is that the allure of being able to leave your bike anywhere is instantly wiped out by never reliably being able to know where one will be, which also causes issues in distribution.

You cant efficiently redistribute bikes that don't congregate, and in order to be able to find them and not loose them, they need extra electronics, and batteries, and security features. OBikes location is bad because it trusts the location that your phone thinks its in.

A dock being full (or empty) is an relatively uncommon inconvenience for me, but the docks are extremely dense (there are 3 within 1-2 minutes walk of my office, and about 4 1-5 minutes walk from my house), and to help with this, the App they provide will show you the closest stations, as well as how full those stations are. Because of this its never more than a 5 minute issue.

My only complaints are, they're a little heavy, though the hardware is 'good enough' to compensate for this. More councils need them installed (I heard this is just an issue of councils not wanting to pay the fee just yet). And I think they should increase the first cost tier to 40mins, that would make it cost effective as a commuter for alot more people.

My regular routes are Angel->E&C (~22mins), and Angel->Primrose Hill (~15mins)

Fully agree re Boris Bikes. They’re a delight, and great complement to other modes of transport on a lengthy commute.

One “hack” that easily doubles the convenience:

> (3) if unfamiliar with your destination, your ride ends hunting around for a dock to park in or you have to plan ahead and remember where to park ... even then it might be full.

Citymapper[0] has a live view of all docking stations and their occupancy. Without this, you can go absolutely mad.

[0] ubiquitous transport app in London.

NYC's Citi Bike started out terribly. But they've improved in leaps and bounds since inception: Better bikes that are rarely broken (some with the really cool NuVinci continuously variable gears), better app, more up-to-date stats on available bikes and docks, good manual rebalancing and community incentives to rebalance (Bike Angels), valet at crowded stations.... to name a few improvements.

They've had to raise their price almost every year - but at $180/year its still a steal.

When Uber came to NYC I (wrongly) thought that it wasn't going to have such a great impact because of the sheer number of yellow cabs that were never that far away. My initial feeling about Uber Bike if it comes to NYC is that it would be great - and help boost bike rider numbers.

I mean, is it? You can easily buy a bike a year for that. And a decent second one at that.

Definitely not a steal, but NYC apartments are usually pretty small and potentially high (and many buildings don't have elevators).

"Boris Bikes is still the best, but restricted to central London and can't unlock via phone."

Not true! The official Santander Cycles app lets you hire a bike via your phone. Works well and saves a huge amount of time compared to using the kiosks.

I agree that the current Boris Bikes are the best, though they have a new lighter, smaller bike model which feels a lot more like a Mobike/ofo to ride. Not as nice IMO.

I wish people wouldn't call them Boris Bikes, as Boris (the former mayor of London) only took credit for this cycling scheme that Livingstone, his predecessor as mayor, originally developed.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/09/transport.world1

Thanks, it wasn't possible a while back when I check, I removed that from my comment.

Might look at installing it again, despite its glorious 2.2 star rating :)

> One good thing though is they apparently move bikes around in vans to help fill capacity

Much better is NYC's approach of using "Bike Angels" ( http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/02/09/new_york_s_ci... ) to redistribute. As I understand it, they still use trucks, but this is visionary compared with London's system, which simply adds more (badly driven, polluting) trucks to traffic.

>One good thing though is they apparently move bikes around in vans to help fill capacity (mainly because commuters move them central in the morning and away again at night). I don't think the new wave of bike startups expanding to new cities every week are hiring drivers to move their stock around.

it was my understanding that this is a common practice among all the bike-share programs, and bike sharing ultimately doesn't work without constant re-shuffling of bikes towards high-demand areas.

Yea, I think every city I've lived in has trucks that shuffle bikes around. It's a pretty basic requirement to keep the cycles distributed.

> Mobike seems like they have their heads more switched on, but the seat on current models is so low that their bikes (in London at least) are barely usable to anyone at average adult height or above.

Are you not able to adjust the seat? Considering the varying heights of people this would seem like a standard expected feature.

I'm not from London, not have a used mobike, but one of the criticisms of obike (one of the schemes started here in Melbourne) is that they've apparently dumped a supply of bikes that SEEM like they were designed for a population of much shorter people (the assumption is east Asian populations).

Either way, when half the male population is 6ft or above, it seems the bikes are just generally too small, even with the seat extended to their maximum height.

You can a bit, but the max height is still absurdly low. Where Boris bikes will probably allow a 190cm tall person to be comfortable, these probably max out around 170cm tall before you're feeling the pain.

I'm 202cm and they're fine for me. Was amazed the first time I tried

I'm 194cm and for me it was a bit too small even when I adjust the seat. I can still ride the bicycle fairly comfortable but I need to be careful as I sometimes scratch my knees against the handlebar. I had few scratches on my right knee last week from riding Mobike so I had to adjust my technique a bit which means I cannot go as fast as I could and can't turn too rapidly left or right.

Obike is the worst. Mobike and Ofo are lightyears better.

In Oxford the best I tried so far is Ofo. It rides like a perfectly normal bike. All others (Boris bikes included) still give me a strange feeling.

Re Boris Bike problems, I can recommend getting the app. It lets you see which nearby docks are full/empty on a map and works really well.

>move bikes around in vans

The irony !

It's not ironic, it's just smart. Carrying just the bikes is much more efficient than carrying humans, since they're lighter and slimmer (a single van can carry dozens) and don't have fixed schedules, so they can be transported outside of rush hour.

Some places have incentives for users to ride bikes to certain docks, but it's not enough to fully balance it.