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Comment by syndacks | Hacker News Reader

I think these bikes miss the mark on two major fronts:

- Why do they need to be electric? Bicycles are phenomenally efficient, even for people who aren't in "good shape." In SF you can find routes around the really crazy hills. Furthermore, electric bikes reduce the barrier to entry for douches to "go cruising". Every day (NYC) I almost get hit by one of these things buzzing around. I'm sure these bikes are less powerful, but come on, exercise!

- Dockless. There is plenty of room for docks, USE THE ROADS. This video does a great job showing how inefficient cars are with space: https://vimeo.com/223171024. It's not right for a company to co-opt public space with their bikes. These should be designed into cities. It's not hard; make space.

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It's much harder to bike in SF without an electric assist. I biked for 2 years in Seattle with no problems, moved to NYC and enjoyed the occasional trip over the Williamsburg bridge. Now in SF and I've only tried to bike once. It was fun bombing the hill outside but I immediately hit another hill and another.. I've essentially given up on riding here.

I use Jump regularly to run errands when I'm downtown and it's much easier to pickup/drop off bikes than it would be worrying about my own expensive bike getting stolen. These aren't quite dockless as they have to locked up properly and are tracked by the app/gps.

This really reads like someone who's never tried an electric bike, there's simply no way that is "missing the mark".

Where I live in SF, it's pretty hard to avoid the hills if I want to ride back to my apartment from downtown, even if I ride the Wiggle. Unless I take a rather circuitous route, there just isn't a way to get around having to go up more than 250 feet. I get the exercising bit, but I already get quite a bit of a workout on one of the Jump bikes.

The dockless bit has been a very big draw for me because the Ford bikes do not have docks out in my neighborhood and do not plan to in the near future. My neighborhood is also somewhat NIMBY: the local merchants association has been very opposed to the BRT project that is going to happen on the main street through the neighborhood because they claim that the decrease in car parking spaces and traffic will cause them to lose business. I wouldn't be surprised if they would resist bike docks as well. For now, dockless is a good short-term solution.

i am very for dockless for a couple reasons

- fan out / fan in. in the morning commute centers (bart, caltrain) will have X bikes in the dock and many times that riders that want a bike. in the evening commute centers will have X dock spots, but many times that riders trying to drop off a bike

- building docks is extremely expensive and time consuming. they should be designed into cities? sure, i agree. but you are talking about doing a public construction project that has to get approved by a planning committee, funded, scheduled, passed all kinds of environment and safety checks, and then a few years and $3,000,000 later a 10-space dock appears on some streets. having the space for docks is not the problem

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