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Comment by cpncrunch | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a good idea to get unfit people onto bikes. However I don't see why Hubway should cost $85 a year. I recently bought a decent second-hand mountain bike for $50 (before that I bought one for $25 that lasted 7 years).

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I can't speak for Hubway, but most municipal bike programs I've seen have bikes built like tanks, which must cost more than $50. I assume this is to minimize the maintenance costs that must be inherent in a system where the bike users have nearly no incentive to take care of the bikes. And, of course, you still have maintenance costs even for these tank-bikes.

Hubway bikes have often been described like that, as "tanks." They are 42 lbs each, designed like that on purpose to be stable & steady street bikes for riders of different skill levels. They do, indeed, cost more than $50, but a lot of that is the technology involved with the docking/rental system, moreso than to minimize maintenance. Alta Bicycle Share, the system that operates Hubway for the metro-Boston region, employees a full team of mechanics and field staff to do regular maintenance, including a full service during the winter months, on the entire fleet of 1300+ bikes.

Here in Hamilton we're getting SoBi - their bikes actually contain cellphone and GPS components so they can phone home with their position. That's more maintenance and service costs.

When you own your own bike, you have to deal with storing it in your possibly cramped apartment, and locking it up outside wherever you go. Then you need to worry about it being stolen or vandalized while you leave it outside. And you need to do any maintenance, which may not be your cup of tea.

With bike sharing, you just leave the bike in a docking station and you don't need to worry about it ever again. The only problem with bike shares is if there isn't a docking station near where you want to go, which is at least a plannable inconvenience, as opposed to getting your bike stolen and needing to walk home 4 miles because there are no good bus routes near you.

> And you need to do any maintenance, which may not be your cup of tea.

And on a <$100 bike (or for that matter any bike under about $400) that'll be frequent. Department store "bike-shaped objects" are not known for their reliability

Well my $25 and $50 bikes have required exactly zero maintenance. I oil the chain once a year, and that's pretty much it. Originally these bikes cost about $200 new I think (Raleigh Ozark and MTB Trekker), so they're fairly decent bikes that are about one step up from the Walmart models. Note that I only ride a couple of times a week, and not every day.

To be honest I think once you spend more than a few hundred dollars you're just paying for fancy suspension and fancy brand-name. I could of course be wrong, as I've never bought an expensive bike.

I live in NYC, and use CitiBike ~10 times a week. I own my own bike, too: $105 (after-tax price) is incredibly cheap for me not to have to worry about locking my bike up outside of my friend's apartment overnight, or finding a safe place to lock up outside my office. Even if it only prevents me from losing a shifter or getting my brake cables cut, it's worth the money.

If I'm going some place that I can bring my bike inside, I ride my own bike. But for ~80% of trips in NY, CitiBike is more convenient (plus, if I meet up with friends, I'm not chained to my bike anymore, and can just use the subway like everyone else).

Craigslist often has some great deals on older bikes in lightly used condition. But it also has ads from professional bike thieves. If an ad is form someone selling lots of cheap, more heavily used bikes that they made no effort to fix up, chances are good they were stolen from a college campus some distance away and taken to a different campus to resell. If your seller has a pickup truck load of such bikes, see if the truck has out of state plates.

You aren't buying a bike for $85/year, you are paying for a service. It's like the difference between buying a server and paying Amazon to do it for you.

If you are discerning enough to buy a decent bike on (e.g.) craigslist for $50, and are confident that you can do any probable maintenance, the service probably is not for you.

I live in Boston and I ended up buying a bike to commute into work. Boston/Cambridge is great for cyclists (drivers not included). The point of Hubway is you pay for the convenience of the network. They have stations literally everywhere. And the cost of maintaining those bikes and stations is probably very high. I think I read somewhere that NYC's Hubway equivalent was losing money (even though it's partially sponsored). I'm not sure how popular their annual memberships, I suspect a lot of the revenue comes from the casual renters like tourists and working folk needing to get from point a to b quickly.

The NYC equivalent is losing money because everyone got a annual pass and not many tourists are using it. The tourists are the real money makers, as only 10 daily passes or 4 weekly passes will be the same cost as an annual pass[1].

If I was the program director though, I wouldn't be worried yet. We just got out of the coldest winter in recent years, and in a few months we can tell if no one is riding the bikes because the novelty wore off or because it was cold.

http://www.citibikenyc.com/pricing

I live in SF and have both a personal commuter bike, and a BABS membership. When I factor in the convenience of not having to do any maintenance on the BABS bike, don't have to worry about fixing any flat tires, don't have to worry about theft (a big problem in SF), and can quickly dock a bike where I'm going, $88 a year feels like a very good deal. The only thing preventing me from going 100% BABS is the network of stations in SF is very sparse and located mostly downtown (see: https://twitter.com/ptraughber/status/388368763281625089).

$85 a year is basically what Netflix costs, i.e. nothing. You get the key, forget about the tiny amount of money it costs, and can now bike whenever you want, regardless of whether or not you have your bike or feel like finding somewhere to lock it up.

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