The Vehicle of the Future Has Two Wheels, Handlebars, and Is a Bike

[dinneR ★]

https://www.wired.com/story/vehicle-future-bike/

What’s the shiniest, most exciting new technology for transportation? Well, there are plenty of candidates! We’ve got the self-­driving car and drones big enough to carry people. Elon Musk is getting ready to bore hyperloop tunnels. When it comes to moving humans around, the future looks to be merging with sci-fi.

But from where I stand, the most exciting form of transportation technology is more than 100 years old—and it’s probably sitting in your garage. It’s the bicycle. The future of transportation has two thin wheels and handlebars.

Modern tech has transformed the humble two-­wheeler, making the bike-share model possible: You check out a bike from a docking station, use it for an hour or so, then return to any other docking station. The concept was tried back in the ’60s but failed miserably because no one could track where the bikes went.

[jsharr ★]

Sounds great on paper but in reality when multiple bike-share companies moving to a city and flood the market with unused bicycles it just ends up being an eyesore and an irritant not a benefit

[jsharr ★]

Dockless sounds great but I have seen it not working in Richardson and Dallas

[dinneR ★]

4 minutes ago, jsharr said:

Sounds great on paper but in reality when multiple bike-share companies moving to a city and flood the market with unused bicycles it just ends up being an eyesore and an irritant not a benefit

This is a pretty solvable problem, though, if cities decide to limit the number of dockless bikes.

[dinneR ★]

4 minutes ago, jsharr said:

Dockless sounds great but I have seen it not working in Richardson and Dallas

They work here.

Usage has grown from 320,000 rides in 2010 to 28 million in 2016. In China, where gridlock in cities like Beijing is infamous, the trend has grown even faster.

The numbers seem to indicate bike share programs are working elsewhere as well.

 

[jsharr ★]

Yes if regulated by the cities and they will work but the bike companies take advantage of cities with no regulation and flood the market. We have five separate Bike Share programs dumping bikes into our neighborhoods and they end up sitting in the middle of sidewalks in the middle of city parks unused for weeks

[dinneR ★]

5 minutes ago, jsharr said:

Yes if regulated by the cities and they will work but the bike companies take advantage of cities with no regulation and flood the market. We have five separate Bike Share programs dumping bikes into our neighborhoods and they end up sitting in the middle of sidewalks in the middle of city parks unused for weeks

That sounds like a Texas problem not a bike share problem. That same goes for car share programs. You actually have to manage it. The bike share program in the twin cities is quite successful.

[Razors Edge ★]

On 5/20/2018 at 2:51 PM, dennis said:

That sounds like a Texas problem not a bike share problem. That same goes for car share programs. You actually have to manage it. The bike share program in the twin cities is quite successful.

We just had a story here on the different bike share programs here.  Seemingly mostly positive results. Scooters are now on my radar!

----------------------------------------------------

Capital Bikeshare recently recorded its 20 millionth trip, and expands Friday into Prince George’s County with a handful of stations near Hyattsville and Largo. A larger expansion had been planned in the county, but is not yet in place.

Dockless bike-share companies came to the region last year. While the dockless companies have faced some complaints, initial research by Virginia Tech professor Ralph Buehler suggests the dockless bikes are expanding options to get around at least some parts of the area.

“Proportionally, the dockless bikes are more dispersed than Capital Bikeshare,” Buehler said.

Buehler and colleagues reviewed location data about the start and end of each trip for the first several months the dockless bikes were permitted in D.C.

Both dockless and Capital Bikeshare bikes are most frequently used downtown in Wards 1, 2 and 6.

“We see proportionally more dockless bikes in Wards 3, 4 and 5, so they seem to go slightly more into different places than where Capital Bikeshare goes,” Buehler said. Wards 3, 4 and 5 are in Northeast and Northwest.

Neither system recorded a high proportion of trips east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8.

Use of Capital Bikeshare, which also has bikes and docks in Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Montgomery County and now Prince George’s County, tends to spike in the morning and afternoon rush hours.

“For dockless, we also found these two peaks in the morning and the afternoon, but the morning peak is much lower and a little bit later than for Capital Bikeshare, and the afternoon peak was much more spread out and higher,” Buehler said.

That could suggest the dockless bikes are being used for more recreational trips or by people with less traditional work hours, he said, which would match the experiences in some other U.S. cities.

Buehler’s students surveyed a small number of students riding dockless bikes. The study found those riders to be somewhat more diverse than Capital Bikeshare users, and found them more likely to have lower incomes.

Capital Bikeshare costs $85 for a yearlong membership that covers unlimited rides under 30 minutes. Single trips are $2 and a 24-hour pass costs $8. The dockless bikes require that users download a smartphone app but they do not need a membership.

“Overall this suggests that, if our sample is correct, that we have a somewhat more diverse group of riders or a different group of riders on these bikes than on Capital Bikeshare,” Buehler said. “It suggests that these dockless systems could be a complement to Capital Bikeshare.”

This initial study did not look at other factors that could contribute to decisions to use or not use bike-share, such as hills, trip distance, or how safe a route seems next to speeding cars. “This is a first look and a preliminary study,” Buehler said.

District Department of Transportation Data suggests dockless bikes have added to the overall number of bike trips in the city.

The dockless pilot was set to expire last month, but now has been extended through August. Plans to charge the companies permit fees and set some additional rules were put off at the last minute.

D.C. now has an online survey looking for feedback on the dockless program, which has been expanded to include electric scooters.

Tom

[donkpow]

I'm not reading that.

[TrentonMakes]

On 5/20/2018 at 2:51 PM, dennis said:

That sounds like a Texas problem

The other Texas problem is that the spurs keep getting tangled in the derailleur.

[jsharr ★]

18 minutes ago, TrentonMakes said:

The other Texas problem is that the spurs keep getting tangled in the derailleur.

I am not aware of any multi speed bike share bikes.  If they are multis, they are internally geared hubs.  

[TrentonMakes]

Just now, jsharr said:

I am not aware of any multi speed bike share bikes.  If they are multis, they are internally geared hubs.  

I should have just said "chain".  Bike share bikes still have chains, right?  Not direct drive?

[jsharr ★]

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/dockless-bikes-promise-future-transportation-litter-city-dallas-n866351

 

[jsharr ★]

3 minutes ago, TrentonMakes said:

I should have just said "chain".  Bike share bikes still have chains, right?  Not direct drive?

I cannot tell how these are driven.  I think they have these made just for Texas.

[Razors Edge ★]

5 minutes ago, jsharr said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/dockless-bikes-promise-future-transportation-litter-city-dallas-n866351

 

Sort them by color!

[dinneR ★]

1 hour ago, jsharr said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/dockless-bikes-promise-future-transportation-litter-city-dallas-n866351

 

The problem with the bike shares echoes some of the larger issues that tech companies have begun to face head on — that a small number of bad actors can cause serious headaches for services created with the best of intentions.

I guess I would say get it together Texas.

[jsharr ★]

9 minutes ago, dennis said:

The problem with the bike shares echoes some of the larger issues that tech companies have begun to face head on — that a small number of bad actors can cause serious headaches for services created with the best of intentions.

I guess I would say get it together Texas.

and Washington and France...

From the same article

Dallas isn’t the only city weighing the costs and benefits of dockless bike startups. Washington has worked through its own experiment with dockless bikes. One Hong Kong-based startup had to leave France after the “mass destruction” of its bikes.

A columnist at The Dallas Morning News has estimated 20,000 or so, and that’s the number people in the industry use. But listening to people complain about them, the estimates often range anywhere from “a crapton” to “a bazillion.”

Whatever the exact number, Dallas now has more dockless bikes than any other North American city in America, and in January, residents filed more than 260 complaints about them. That same month, Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax sent out a memo hoping to put the brakes on the situation. The message instructed bike-share companies to start moving bikes that had been dropped in inconvenient places, or, ominously, the city “may be left with no choice” but to remove them.

[dinneR ★]

18 minutes ago, jsharr said:

 

Whatever the exact number, Dallas now has more dockless bikes than any other North American city in America,

definitely a Dallas problem.

These programs, like anything, need to be managed to be successful. It's not rocket surgery.