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Comment by alex_young | Hacker News Reader

Why do we need bike shares at all? Shouldn't there just be enough bikes lying around that everyone could just ride whenever they wanted?

There are around 18MM new bikes sold a year in the US [1]. About 100MM people bike each year in the US [2].

Do bikes really wear out every 5 years? Mine is 22 years old and still in great condition.

We should have piles of the things at every street corner. There must be landfills full of bikes.

[1] https://nbda.com/articles/industry-overview-2012-pg34.htm [2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/04/survey-100-million-am...

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No we don't. We need better bikepaths, separate from cars, covered from the elements, multi-lane, safe and secure, extensive routes.

I have promoted the idea of building a network of bikepaths over the train lines here in Brisbane. Goes everywhere the train does, with entry and exits at trains stations.

Not only bikepaths but also parking lots for them.

Oh man that’d be fantastic. Though I don’t know how it’d work through Central. I used to ride from the Valley to Red Hill for work every day, and even that felt too sketchy, which is sad :( I love Brisbane, but there’s a lot of room for improvement.

I'm sure engineers can figure that out, but I am thinking as soon as you'd hit Roma Street from either direction the path should go along the North and South Banks of the river.

Raised platforms in the city, say over Adelaide Street and Elizabeth Street along one way, and over Edward Street and George Street the other way, would be amazing. Just imagine.

I live in Nundah and work in Edward Street. Biking down Sandgate Road, Nudgee Road or Gympie Road in peak hour is suicidal. Back roads are not much better.

Shared bicycles have some advantages over own ones:

- if you own a bike, you need a space in your apartment to keep it. Of course, if you have your own house, it is not a problem (but you have lot of other problems like no public transportation around), but in cities like Moscow or Beijing most people live in relatively small apartments and some of them rent only a single room. And usually you cannot park your bicycle outside.

- in many cities you can ride a bicycle only 7-8 months a year because it is cold in winter.

- you don't care if it gets stolen.

- you cannot get on a bus or a subway train with a bicycle. With a shared bicycle you can leave it near the station and take a new one on another station.

- a new bicycle can cost about $100-200, and a shared one can cost around $10-20 per month.

"you cannot get on a bus or a subway train with a bicycle."

Most European cities allow that. There may be some restrictions. I.e. Limited to certain cars, or banned during rush hours and, dependent on the city, you may have to buy a ticket for your bike.

But seeing bikes in buses, subways, or trams is perfectly normal in most European cities.

Piling things up on public space requires some infrastructure and regulation.

edit: your question is akin to asking, "Why are people starving when our farmers are so productive, and the average restaurant/grocery throws out tons of spoiled food annually?". The problem is not purely one of lack of quantity.

As well as having proper roads to bike them on, most of America has pretty lame bike infrastructure generally.

Separately, your 22-year-old probably steel-frame bike is probably built a lot better than the average cheap aluminum ones these days, and you've probably taken good enough care of it that it doesn't have a broken or badly bent frame. We're a wasteful people.

Here's one problem: some places will be more popular for pickups and some places will be more popular for drop-offs. Who is going to move the bikes around to balance this?

Something I've thought about is to offer a modest reward for taking a bike from A to B, where the endpoints are determined by algorithm, or there are specified drop off points. This could be a form of income for the otherwise unemployable.

Likewise, litter of bottles and cans went way down in my home state when they created a 10 cent deposit.

In the Lime Bike app, some bike pins glow and if you ride them for more than 5 minutes you get a coupon. I assume they apply the incentive to areas with high density to encourage spreading the bikes out.

Why is that so? If people in a city move from their house to the downtown or to the nearest subway station, they will return the bicycle on their way back.

Picture a shopping mile with a train station at one end. Many people will arrive by train, do their shopping and then want to return to the train station to get back home.

You can also reduce the number of bikes needed by doing timed redistributions. Two people in the same appartment building, one leaves for work around 7 while the other leaves around 9, can share a bike if someone brings it from the nearest subway station to the local bike station at 8.

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