CABI Balancing on Bike To Work Day

[S. Arlington Observer]

First, I want to say upfront that I love Capital Bikeshare and treasure my membership. I ride a bike home (about 7.5 miles) virtually every work day of the year (only extreme cold, rain or ice on the trails stop me.) It is a high point in my day.

Generally, I don’t bike TO work since the scheduling logistics don’t work that well for me. However, in appreciation of the effort to get people to do so, I did bike part way to work on the 15th. (Biked a few miles to a metro station to finish the trip.) It was fun, but the BTW Day had an unfortunate consequence.

On Friday evening and for several days into the next week it was hard to find a bicycle anywhere near my office in Courthouse or other docks along the Orange/Silver line corridor. It is as if BTW Day stripped the supply from Arlington (presumably for one way trips into the District.)

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to try and entice first timers to commute by bikes only to have their initial experience be one of empty docks for several days. That might be more discouraging than encouraging.

Hopefully there will be a strong effort to re-balance and return some of the bikes to cleaned out docks (especially near commuting hot spots) next year.

[Tim Kelley]

@S. Arlington Observer 116354 wrote:

First, I want to say upfront that I love Capital Bikeshare and treasure my membership. I ride a bike home (about 7.5 miles) virtually every work day of the year (only extreme cold, rain or ice on the trails stop me.) It is a high point in my day.

Generally, I don’t bike TO work since the scheduling logistics don’t work that well for me. However, in appreciation of the effort to get people to do so, I did bike part way to work on the 15th. (Biked a few miles to a metro station to finish the trip.) It was fun, but the BTW Day had an unfortunate consequence.

On Friday evening and for several days into the next week it was hard to find a bicycle anywhere near my office in Courthouse or other docks along the Orange/Silver line corridor. It is as if BTW Day stripped the supply from Arlington (presumably for one way trips into the District.)

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to try and entice first timers to commute by bikes only to have their initial experience be one of empty docks for several days. That might be more discouraging than encouraging.

Hopefully there will be a strong effort to re-balance and return some of the bikes to cleaned out docks (especially near commuting hot spots) next year.

Actually, I think it has more to do with Metro being broken earlier in the week: https://twitter.com/BikeArlington/status/597791743808040960

And then it was just poor timing that Bike to Work Day happened to coincide a few days later before the system had a chance to get back to normal through the standard rebalancing methods. Most bikes flow downhill, so if you’re in Courthouse at the top of the hill you might have some issues getting a bike.

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