A few items from the land of Vancouver bike-share.
Jens von Bergmann finds tweets-of-gold in the fast-growing thickets of Mobi data: e.g. each bike gets around 3 rides per day so far. This is pretty good for a smallish system, as Mobi is currently, as the installation rolls out.
Ontario and Seawall station: most popular (for a few days at least)
This related information comes from New York City via a large report on mobility in general. CITI Bike there has around 8000 bikes (soon growing to 10,000), and for some types of trips is cheaper and faster than a cab.
It’s easy to see which is the better deal for one person. Taxis still make a lot of sense though for more than one traveler.
So if I’m a tourist or very casual user, I have to go through the process of signing up online and knowing how many times I’ll need the bikes in a day? Seems way too complicated. If I’m a tourist access to internet can be tricky and how are you supposed to know how often you’ll want to use it? Why would they have that stupid restriction?
In Montreal, when I needed bike for one day, I walked up to machine, put in credit card, paid $5 and had unlimited uses that day. All I had to do was use my credit card as id at any other station and it’d give me a new code to unlock the bike. If I had to go though the process mobi is asking of me I wouldn’t have done it.
Just make it simple!
Isn’t it just one price for a day pass, and then unlimited use (up to 30 minutes each trip)? All you have to know in advance is how many in your party/family, ie how many bikes you want to take out at once.
On line sign up works now, but kiosks reported to be coming at high volume stations so users can transact there. The system is still being rolled out.
Yes my bad, knowing how many bikes is number of, not times you’ll use them. Still,I think requiring signing up online is a barrier. This should be as simple as possible.
Three trips per bike per day is very good for something still in the early stages. Other cities didn’t have it so high so early but then again people now know what these are unlike a few years ago.
I took my first ride today. On the weekend, I was hanging out near a station with my son playing Pokemon Go. And, four out of four users that came by dropped the helmet. So, today, for my first ride, I was keenly aware about not letting the helmet drop. But, then I dropped it anyway.
As soon as you unlock the bike, the helmet falls on the ground. Pretty bad design, unfortunately. Plus, my bike did not like gearing down. It was “sticky” shifting and liked hanging on to gear 4 before “ka-chunking” down to gear 1.
Anyway, my planned usage model isn’t to commute. Instead, I’m planning to use it to extend my running areas. I love running around Stanley Park. But, it’s out of my range from Mount Pleasant. My plan is to use Mobi to ride out to Stanley Park and then run the sea wall. Depending how I feel, I’ll either run all the way home or get onto another Mobi and ride back. Glad to have a service that allows me to do this now.
This explains why the helmets are so durable, to survive the drop when someone checks it out.
I think there should be some information to people about internal gear hubs and not pedalling when shifting. The majority of people in this continent only know derailleurs so might not know this about internal gear hubs.
From my observation 3 out of 4 don’t wear the helmets anyway. That restores my faith in humans. But it makes the whole helmet juggling act a waste of effort.