Ebikes!

Motivate have ebikes in San Francisco branded Ford GoBike+ recently they introduced an in house design that looks like a capital bikeshare bike with a front hub motor, feedback comments on Twitter are positive with riders liking the features shared with the standard bike, instead of the 3-speed IGH WTOP report it has an “infinity gear” presumably a CVT (https://wtop.com/dc-transit/2018/09/capital-bikeshare-rolls-out-electric-bikes-as-part-of-pilot-program/)
https://twitter.com/FordGoBike

@Judd 180709 wrote:

E-CaBis are on the streets tomorrow.

Only 80 in the system. Which means it’ll be like trying to find a unicorn. I’ll give it a test ride if it’s not a competitive sport just to locate one.

I find the “juicers” or volunteer ($) scooter chargers quite entertaining. Today I saw a guy on Army Navy Drive riding a Bird, while he had at least two others somehow balanced onboard. Ghosting to an extreme.

@Judd 180731 wrote:

CaBi FAQs day that there will be a lightning bolt symbol to indicate e-bike locations. Happy hunting tomorrow everyone.

The lightning bolt now exists. Unfortunately, it’s more or less useless, because there are so few ebikes in the system that if you go to a location with a lightning bolt, the ebike is pretty much sure to be gone by the time you get there.

I tried to get an ebike one day, using a Jump bike to get to the CaBi locations. I went through four CaBi locations (one of which showed two ebikes), without managing to snag one. I finally gave up and used Metro.

One time, I found one in the wild–only to discover that I couldn’t take it out because it was broken.

Of course, this was not as bad as the time I finally found an ebike that wasn’t broken at a CaBi station, went to take it out, and discovered that someone had smeared a thick layer of dogshit on it…

So far, I have never managed to ride a CaBi ebike. I’m really hoping that CaBi will soon get enough of them that finding one (preferably one without the dogshit) is practical.

@Yule 181917 wrote:

Which leads me to wonder why the ebikes with dead batteries but otherwise running fine are not allowed to be used as “non-e” bikes? The “electric assist” is optional, in that you have to press a button to turn it on, but once the battery is gone, the bike is locked up even if it otherwise runs fine.

I assume because allowing it to travel after the low battery has been detected would make it harder to replace the battery.

I imagine there’s data to inform how much of a problem this is now, and to help predict whether it would be a problem with more ebikes.

@Yule 181917 wrote:

With only eighty in the entire region during the phase-in period…

Just a note on this. The CaBi Plusses are a pilot until the end of November. The pilot itself is more of a Motivate conceived thing than an ask from the jurisdictions that contract with Motivate to operate bikeshare. Unlike regular CaBi’s the Plusses are not owned by the government jurisdictions. My understanding is that Motivate (and their Lyft overlord) are trying to gauge usage as well as additional cost to purchase and maintain an e-bike fleet and once they do so they’ll be some sales pitching to the jurisdictions to spend more money on bikes and operating costs.

The last figure I heard was that a Cabi Plus was averaging over 7 trips per day which is roughly double of of a regular CaBi. I haven’t heard anything about whether having the e-bikes in the fleet has led to any increase in overall ridership. It would be interesting to see if a mostly e-bike fleet would lead to higher usage or if usage would stay relatively flat (but be more fun.)

My friend Schep made a tool to alert you when a CaBi Plus is docked at locations of your choosing: https://the-cabi-electric.glitch.me

@Dewey 183125 wrote:

Good analysis of the CaBi Plus ebike trial on GGW https://ggwash.org/view/69833/capital-bikeshare-members-hog-the-new-e-bikes-other-things-we-learned-data

I really hope to be able to take advantage of this some day. I love the Jump bikes, but their utility is limited by the fact that they aren’t allowed to go beyond the DC line, and I live in Bethesda.

However, I have yet to take even one trip on a CaBi Plus. There are so few of them that there may not be one in the area you need in the first place. The lack of ability to reserve one means that you can rush to a station that has one, only to find it already gone. And then I’ve had a series of issues, ranging from the one that got stuck in its dock and couldn’t be taken out to the one that had been deliberately smeared with a thick layer of dog poop.

If the CaBi Plus bikes ever become readily available, that would motivate me to buy a membership. But it is simply not practical to take a regular CaBi on my usual route (seven miles, much of it straight up Massachusetts Avenue to the Cathedral). I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the program is expanded some day to the point of being useful.