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Comment by alangibson | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently sitting in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. One of the first things you notice when you get here is that there are not bike lanes, not bike paths but very seriously bike roads on either side of the street. These are filled pretty much all the time by people of all ages on their personal bikes. There are no rental bikes anywhere. The moral of this story is that if you want people to bike, build bikeable cities, don't fill sprawled out and hazard filled cities with functionally useless rental bikes.

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I'm an avid biker, and I also make heavy use of my city's shared bike program. I go more miles on my own bikes, but I ride shared bikes more often.

I think you're overlooking many significant use cases for shared bikes. Here's a few: - It's well below freezing out and you just want to quickly get from your apartment to the train station, drop the bike off and forget about it. - You won't be returning to that station to pick the bike back up later. - Bike to the grocery store. Walk back carrying several big bags. - Take the train into work in the morning, bike back when you have more time or energy. - Getting from one point to another where a cab would be overkill but walking take too long. - You want to bike to places, but don't want to deal with lugging your bike up 5 flights of stairs several times a day or don't have room to store it if you do.

The summary is that shared bikes let you ride in situations which you normally wouldn't. (And of course for many casual riders it can easily be their only bike.)

Fair enough, but the difference between a biker and non-biker is not access to a bike. The difference is that one thinks it's too physically difficult and/or dangerous and the other doesn't. Thats a problem of environment, not access.

I used to live in a town that was much more bikeable, and easier to own a bike in (more space in my house to store it). I was a super-regular bike commuter, but now I just want it sometimes when something is over 2 miles away but less than 10. I think this is pretty common for a lot of people living in cities, and bike shares are a godsend.

Another thing not mentioned is how nice it is for people who are from out of town, either as tourists or nomads or in for work. I lived/worked in Taipei for a month, and bike share is part of the government transit program, first 30 minutes free, and you can access it with your subway transit card. This singlehandedly made me love the city.

I had actually forgotten I still own a personal bike until writing this reply.

Well part of a problem with biking is that you need a place to secure a bicycle. Many places in America do not have this; not everyone is carrying a lock and often there's nothing to lock to. No one wants to ride a mode of transportation that is impossible to secure and is going to get stolen by the time they need to make the return trip. Bike share is good in that it removes that particular obstacle.

>the difference between a biker and non-biker is not access to a bike //

Can't get planning permission for a shed in your front garden to put a bike in so if you're in a standard UK terrace you have to carry a bike through your house or keep it inside. This makes storage an utter pig and daily use is practically ruled out unless you want a house full of dirty drips and wheel marks. Richer friends have semis, so have side access or driveways.

Servicing needs tools, not too many but a few, and skill (not a problem for me). Cost is a couple £hundred for a decent bike, I can't find any second hand that appear to be working for less than £50 in my area, I think the bike thieves actually inflate prices. Those bikes are barely usable IME. £80 for a 2nd hand bike, or £100-120 for a really crappy new bike.

I love biking, can't afford the bus, but also can't really afford to keep a decent bike. With access I'd ride 3 days out of 7 as a minimum.

/anecdata

I’m in Sydney. Those are pretty minor use cases compared to the sheer nuisance of dockless bikes.

No helmets, no seats, bent wheels. Left in the middle of side walks. Left on other people’s property. In trees.

The people who typically use them are casual bikers too, so they use the side walk instead of the roads.

No idea about the below freezing stuff.

Yea I’ll admit I’m skeptical of dockless bikes as well. We have docks and since there’s basically always one within half a mile or (usually much) less, it works perfectly fine imo.

Maybe dockless would be nice on a beach with a boardwalk, but in a city? Where are they going to go? And I have a hard time imagining anywhere with a typical not NYC or main downtown area population density will keep them moving enough. I’m happy to be proven wrong though.

I am in the city of Sydney, where no less than 4 dockless bike rental companies started operating overnight.

They have become urban clutter. Users park them in locations where they’re easily knocked over and, from there, they usually get damaged.

There’s also a very high incidence of vandalism. Bikes with no seats, no pedals, bent wheels, on top of trees, in canals.

It’s common to see heaps of scrap bikes on the road. These companies not only are using public land to offer their services but also polluting my city.

All this has made me a vocal opposer of dockless rentals. Work with city council to put your bikes on a dock or don’t come here.

That's a valid opinon but surely the same applies to roads, covered with heaps of scrap cars and car parts?

Cars need to pay tax to be on public roads, which then is used for maintenance costs.

These bikes are using public land for free.

US roads are paid for by income and property tax dollars. Gas taxes and fees barely put a dent in the TCO of the roadway.

The dockless jump bikes seemed to be locked to something. I think it's a requirement for riders to lock them after use, and so far, they haven't been cluttering SF.

Maybe that is the compromise. No docks, but have to be locked to some sort of normal bike rack to prevent clutter. The manufacturer / city isn't responsible for maintaining expensive dock infrastructure where company A cant use company B's docks, and apartments & businesses can create bike parking space in an adhoc manner, making the over all market more efficient.

Do they have the same problem other bike rental companies have had in SF where users ride them to the bottom of the hills where they just stack up?

Most cities aren't as hilly as SF.

I would think that ebikes would cause stacking at the top of hills, since it does all the work for you :p

Being serious, I have no idea.

I think all bike systems will need rebalancing of some sort. Be it through cheaper pricing or other incentives or something else.

You have to lock Jump bikes to bike racks after use and are liable if you do not and it gets stolen, so it's "semi-dockless" in that sense and unlike other bike sharing companies.

Bike shares are great even if you have a great bicycling city. I myself am a Very Serious Cyclists, more than 200 miles per week, and I still use the bike share at least weekly. Just today I had to take my car to the shop, then I took a train to another place and there was a Lime Bike so I jumped on that and went to my destination. I have no idea why people complain about bike shares, dockless or docked.

They get piled up against buildings. They exacerbate the problem that many US roads have no place for cyclists, and alternatively, cyclists incorrectly will use sidewalks. All said, in the current state, more cycling is creating a bigger problem and not solving the hard ones.

Cycling is awesome. Let's fix how they coexist on roads.

Literally nobody has ever been killed by a shared bike ridden improperly upon a sidewalk. Meanwhile people are killed every day by cars on sidewalks, and we're all headed for extinction from climate change caused by cars no matter how operated. Don't tell me I am supposed to care about the infinitesimal imaginary harm of someone who chooses a bicycle, especially if that person would have normally chosen a car.

As for "piled up against buildings" just give me a break already. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&source=hp&q=car+crash... The aesthetic argument is by far the stupidest argument against bike shares.

A car crashing into a building is a news story.

A misplaced share bike is daily life in cities with lots of shares.

I’m not particularly against them, but they can turn into more of a nuisance than a benefit quickly.

>I have no idea why people complain about bike shares, dockless or docked.

You like the bike shares you’ve used, or you don’t know why people complain?

Because if it’s the latter, the main reason is they can easily become a nuisance:

https://www.twitter.com/hashtag/DocklessBikeFail

People abuse them, and when/if the programs fail you end up with stories like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-...

I don’t know what you’re trying to show me with that first link. It’s two scooters parked in a street parking spot that would normally be occupied by only one car. To me that’s a huge victory for urban America over the automobile.

That’s a link to hundreds of images... that being said, which parking spot? The pictures I see are knocked over bikes thrown about like a child's poorly kept toys.

Contrary to what you may believe, you’re not allowed to leave a car wherever you feel like it at a given moment.

You can’t even leave your own person sprawled out on whatever public surface pleases you.

No idea how this is a “huge victory”

The first image that Twitter shows me for that hash tag is this one, which contains neither bikes nor failure. https://twitter.com/clair_415/status/981749790001135616

Leaving rideshare scooters in a commercial district parking space is a fail. Cars pay and have time limits.

Judging by your username and a serious hatred for cars, I'm guessing you might be letting bias cloud your judgement here...

Just to add a little bit to this: I also live in NL and the cycling infrastructure is not limited to central locations; there are well maintained, separated, safe cycling roads between cities as well. It helps that it's a small country, but even fairly long distances like Rotterdam -> Den Haag (~25km/15miles) is easily done without ever mixing with vehicle traffic.

Exactly. And as a pedestrian, I expect to be having arguments with the people renting these bikes (I already have had a few, and they're still new in my city). They seem to think they can ride on the sidewalk, even though the street I've had the argument has a separate bike lane.

Is the bike lane physically protected from the car lanes? If not, it's quite dangerous to ride in it, no matter what the law says.

Edit: I should add, please don't buy into the idea that people walking and bicycling should fight over the scraps of space left over after nearly everything is given to cars.

This is what is happening in Phoenix metro. Ofo and others are littering sidewalks and business courtyards with their bright bikes that no one uses.

OK we will start over.

Actually, in the 70s Netherlands was very much a car-first country. The current cycling infrastructure is a very hard won victory, with thousands dead along the way [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o

. M.. Mm. Mmm

There used to be no sidewalks. Streets were for people and the occasional horse. Then Henry Ford started making cars. Let's all be glad that we didn't decide to just let pedestrians be mowed down by cars because hey man it's just too hard to start over

Err not just the occasional horse cities had huge numbers of horse drawn vehicles and there shit was a major health problem.

As a sport Horse riding is actually one of the more dangerous ones.

I'm in Amsterdam, and it's really incredible what you can do when the entire city is bike friendly.

I don't want to leave in large part because of it actually.

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