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Comment by godzillabrennus | Hacker News Reader

If they can offer these without the inconvenient docking stations it’ll be a much more popular transportation option.

I don't agree.

With permanent, known stations, a dock system can be more easily integrated into the existing public transportation network. This way the two systems can work together, and make the transportation of the region more efficient in general.

These bike share startups should honestly all be to some degree folded into the public transportation network in general. It should be a mid to long term goal for buses, bike share and metro to be able to use the same public transport metro card.

We've already seen many examples of this of dockless systems being a nuisance to businesses, local residents, and city governments. This is the sort of public service that doesn't make a lot of sense to be handled privately IMO.

You can already use a clipper card to unlock a gobike in SF. It's how I do it all the time, and it's incredibly convenient. If only they had a station essentially every block or every other block; the one by my house is frequently empty.

"Point to point" is a huge part of the appeal of cars over the existing public transportation network. We dedicate a ton of space to enabling point to point for cars, and barely any for bike docks and the like.

Dockless scooters are the most effective thing I've seen yet - in very limited areas, so far - at starting to combat the limitations of the public transit network compared to the road/sidewalk/parking lot network. Bikes are too big to work well in this way, but scooters have done well.

And yet in a congested city, the closest car parking may be 2-3 blocks. Not a huge advantage over bike docks.

Two to three blocks is much less than the amount of walking I would have to do as part of a typical within-3-mile local trip using either local bike-sharing bikes or public transportation. That would be 6-10+ blocks of walking, and a transfer or two (in the case of bus or rail). So I'll drive or lyft, because that's a pretty big convenience/flexibility advantage, especially if I'm making multiple stops.

But Birds are increasingly tempting because I usually see one within one to two blocks of my apartment.

> This way the two systems can work together

That's the way it works in Helsinki. In the summer docks appear, stocked with bicycles. If you look on the local transport-company website you can see a realtime map of the trams, busses, and the number of bikes available at each dock-site.

For example on the following map you can see the number of bikes available near my house:

https://www.reittiopas.fi/pysakit/HSL:1160404

It costs €25/month to be a member, and then you can ride any bike in the city for free for 30 minutes. After that you pay, or park your bike and take another.

I've never used them, because I grew up cycling on the other side of the road and I'm a little too nerveous to cycle here, but I suspect that fear will fade in a few more years.

> the other side of the road

That seems rather limiting. Here in Copenhagen, I don't know any GB/AU/NZ/etc people who can ride a bike but choose not to. I cycled from the airport to the city centre on my first day here...

It perhaps helps that I'm from SE England, so about once a year my dad would drive the car to (or through) France without a fuss.

Helsinki looks very green, I must plan a visit.

Helsinki is very green in the summer!

I'm exaggerating a little, but I know that the few times I've borrowed a bike from a friend to ride along a cycle-path my instictive reaction is always to turn the wrong way when going round corners/junctions/cross-roads.

Throw cars, trams, and buses into the mix? Well I think I'd have to be concentrating more than usual which makes me a little less keen. No doubt I'll relax over time.

Yup, I agree with docked systems for bike sharing.

Mobike (8 million bikes, founded 2015 [1]) and Ofo (3 million bikes, founded 2014 [2]) are the world's top two bike sharing operators. They also happen to be using dockless systems for their bikes, that have proven dockless systems have created nightmares in operation and maintenance cost, as well as the known oversupply and abandonment problems[3], let alone the uphill battle clashing with local governments and business in bike parking and storage. Dockless system is convenient from individual bike rider's perspective but it's more costly to operator in terms of operation(collection, redistribution etc.) and maintenance (bikes are more sophisticated due to the requirement of tracking and individually connected for rental transaction operation.)

There is a analogy to the dock system vs. dockless system debate: which ways of transportation is sustainable and logical? Private automobiles or public transit? From the micro-level, private automobiles provides convenience to individual drivers but creates much bigger problems in the macro-level, congestion, efficiency(due to vacant seats), parking etc.; whereas, public transit is always better in terms of transportation efficiency (higher number of multi-occupancy, much easier to scale up ridership, the whole point of sharing economy), easier to manage from traffic flow perspective and much cheaper in terms of operating cost both from operator's perspective and rider's perspective.

[1]: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/mobike-statistics-fa...

[2]: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/ofo-statistics/

[3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...

What your describing sounds a lot like Zagster on my campus. From what I understand, they work with universities, corporations, and cities to build out their bike sharing network. It seems like Zagster is trying to play the role of bike sharing contractor.

The docking stations are convenient in some ways because you know where to go to find a bike and you can feel good that you're not leaving it in a place that is in the way.

The one major annoyance I've found with them is that coverage is extremely restricted. In SF, coverage doesn't reach Fishermans Wharf, Golden Gate bridge or Golden Gate park.

When I was in SF for tourism a few years ago, it was a complete non-starter even though at a glance it seemed like the most promising option.

>in SF for tourism a few years ago, it was a complete non-starter

That's intentional - http://www.sfexaminer.com/transportation-officials-halt-fund...

FWIW, it was also extremely restricted when I used it in Toronto. Coverage only went as far as middle of Korean Town, meaning you couldn't use it to go to, say, High Park. For commuting it was an even sillier proposition, because the coverage overlapped with the densest subway/bus grid in the city, and it was not much cheaper per month than a subway pass, unless you got a groupon for it.

It would be nice if there was more coverage but they have been expanding in the Bay Area over the past year.

It is around $150 a year in the Bay Area right now which makes it very economical if you can take the bike instead of the subway or a bus (i.e. just replace six bus trips per month.)

If the stations were upgraded a bit, I bet the docking stations could charge the E-bikes. That would make it especially useful to have docks, far less labor involved in manually charging bikes, the rider sets it to charge automatically!

All the bikes in Seattle (Lime, Ofo and Spin) are dockless and GPS tracked so you can find a bike anytime using their app.

But that means you have to check your app; hopefully your phone isn't dead. Also, some days you might need to travel farther to find a bike.

I realize there are also advantages to dockless (you don't have to walk the last bit when near your destination and maybe the bike is nearer to you when you start.)

These are just some ways in which using a dock are more convenient.

> and you can feel good that you're not leaving it in a place that is in the way.

If only more people felt that way. But look at how many are too lazy/selfish to put away their shopping cart and leave it in a parking spot or propped up on a curb. Even though the docking stations are always close by in that case.

In Dallas, dockless bikes are nothing but problematic.

People have gotten in the habit of dumping their bikes on strangers' front lawns and laying them down on sidewalks without using the kickstand. There was a pretty public case of a blind man being seriously injured because someone left a bike just laying on the sidewalk.

In retaliation, much of the citizenry has taken to vandalizing the bikes. There are pictures online of people throwing them into ditches and creeks, people sawing the bikes in half, people turning masses of bikes into impromptu art sculptures, etc.

Same thing with the electric scooters in SF. I've even seen many vandalized scooters--including one that someone had lovingly taken a dump on.

It seems like there's a lot of potential for self-policing in that regard. Just a few random ideas:

1. The bikes could have an orientation sensor that would require them to be upright before you can end your rental.

2. When a user picks up a bike, have them rate the appropriateness of how and where it was parked. Obviously, bad parking is not always the previous rider's fault, but if a consistent pattern emerges, you could penalize them in some way.

3. Dockless bikes presumably have GPS, so they could warn you if you're parking in an area that you shouldn't, if they had (crowd-sourced?) maps of what areas are good and bad.

4. If a bike is left somewhere that GPS says isn't good, offer other users incentives (free rental, etc.) if they will go pick it up. Basically this creates cheap labor to clean up messes.

There is a quiet war brewing between city councils and dockless bike companies. It's tough to say whether cities will embrace a dockless bike/scooter future, or if they will ultimately ban the companies from operation, leaving a market for docked bikes to remain.

Quiet, perhaps, but visually egregious. Lime bikes are seen daily abandoned and often lying on sidewalks, on grass, in fields & even on street curbs.

In my city, cars are parked everywhere, on the sides of every road, on sidewalks sometimes, now THAT is egregious!

A car parked on the street doesn't inconvenience me but a bike/scooter on the sidewalk does - every single day. I'm a cyclist myself. I do like the convenience of dockless bikes for drop offs.

Cars parked on the street are a huge inconvenience. They've just managed to formalize that inconvenience, and we forget about the fact that cars stole 85% of the street while people using their own feet are stuck sharing the other 15% with trash cans, telephone poles, and basically anything else in our public sphere.

Parked cars are always in the way, the ones double parked blocking the official bike lane are hugely disruptive and dangerous and the nearly permanently parked cars along the side block what could be actually effective biking and pedestrian infrastructure. Just because cars are parked on the "street" and this is the status quo doesn't mean its no longer an inconvenience.

There aren't many dockless hire bikes in Copenhagen, but they cause no problem. That's because there's existing places for people to leave bicycles.

Maybe these startup should work with the city councils to install similar bike parking in some locations, either by removing 1-2 car parking spaces (10-20 bikes?) or using otherwise wasted space.

There are lots of examples on http://www.copenhagenize.com/2013/04/using-street-space-for-...

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