Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

In my view, when bike parking becomes a problem in urban areas, cities do take steps towards regulating it. In my locale, there are numerous places where I've seen little signs forbidding bike parking, such as trees and hand railings. I don't know if these signs are backed up by real ordinances or what, but it does seem to point to a problem that's interesting enough for somebody to have addressed it. The nearby college used to be laissez faire about gas scooters, and now those have designated parking spaces and registration tags.

One feature of the system for enforcing parking ordinances, is that if your car is illegally parked, you're on the hook. Your license plate is tied to your identity, and you will be found. Even rentals or shares could have a way to identify the most recent user, otherwise the rental company has to eat the fine. With some random bike or scooter, not so easy, if there is not some kind of enforced numbering system.

I'm also guessing that with things such as bikes that are cheap enough (e.g., bikes and scooters), a growth strategy for a start-up is to address availability and ease of use first, and deal with cleaning up their mess later. Move fast and break things.

I'm an avid cyclist and cycling advocate, so I'd love to see bike sharing thrive, but I'm not brimming with great ideas.

One obvious solution would be to add more bike parking. Bike parking is rare in most cities, which is why you end up with people locking their bikes to poles, fences, trees, benches, and anything else available.

It's amazing how much urban space we're willing to dedicate to cars in the way of streets and parking (most of it free!), and yet bicycle parking is often a rarity.

A couple percent of car parking spots converted to bike racks/scooter parking would do a lot to mitigate these issues.

When I was a kid, the schools had long rows of bike racks festooned with bikes. These days, a school has a single 5 foot rack with one forlorn bike in it and parents have to authorize their kids to bike to school.

When I drive by a school when they let out, the 20mph speed limit is a bit pointless because there are hardly any kids walking home (unlike the mobs when I was a kid). Their moms are all waiting in a long line with their SUVs idling (for some reason they never turn off the motor) while they text away.

The risk is that some kid runs around the car and into traffic to get in on the other side. You want cars to go slowly enough to quickly brake if small children dart into traffic.

In my college bike town, when bikes or scooters are improperly parked, they broke the lock and impounded your bike and you had the option to pay a fee for it back, otherwise it'll be auctioned off after some time.

It's even easier to do that with sharing services because the company name is plastered all over the vehicle. Fine the company, they can eat the cost or find some way to keep track of how to pass it along to the user.

I would imagine this problem would be really easy to solve with bike sharing- to use it you have to register and pay a deposit. If a bike checked out with your name is never returned or is abandoned, they keep your deposit...

Edit- I suppose I have just invented docking.

> With some random bike or scooter, not so easy, if there is not some kind of enforced numbering system.

Even if there is, someone else could have moved the scooter after it was properly parked.

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