CaBi classic bike base-time increasing to 45 mins for annual members

[Judd]

Henry said on Twitter that the return of Bike Angels is a soft launch to work out any bugs. It hasn’t rolled out to me yet. An extension to 45 minutes would be great. I’ve had so many times where I was just over 30 minutes if I decided to ride home. I would be willing to pay more per year if I could get a 60 minute window.

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[Yule]

@Judd 210460 wrote:

An extension to 45 minutes would be great. I’ve had so many times where I was just over 30 minutes if I decided to ride home. I would be willing to pay more per year if I could get a 60 minute window.

I’ve often had the same idea. The thirty-minute window seems to me a legacy of the (system of the) early 2010s and hasn’t made sense for years now. It’s entirely a nuisance and doesn’t reflect how many regulars actually use (or would use) the system.

I have an Arlington County Bike Map dated 2012. A lot of it is familiar, bike paths and things, but the Bikeshare network is entirely changed. At that time, the farthest-west station in the county was the one opposite Clarendon Metro entrance. Imagine that! If you are going to downtown DC from this extreme-west point of the circa-2012 early CaBi network, thirty minutes seems plenty. But it’s not now.

(Even the 45-minute limit, seemingly to be rolled in here in the early 2020s, is just catching up with the realities of the system achieved by circa 2016/17. IMO.)

According to the guy who used to run Bike Angels (not sure if he is around anymore, name is Collin)., who started the NYC bike angels program and then also supervised the initial DC bike-angel system, the thirty-minute limit was the source of complaint by people all over the place, including by those who ran the system, including himself indirectly. He says this 30-minute cap was imposed by a well-intentioned-but-misguided rule by the people making political decisions re: bikeshare in the late 2000s in its initial planning stages. It was “as a way to protect the systems,” which didn’t make much sense then and certainly doesn’t now.

I can imagine a criticism of 45-min or 60-minute base-times as follows: If someone has lost a bike, or is intending to “steal” a bike, or there is some kind of problem with docking or something else and a bike has been abandoned, they want t o get in contact with the user ASAP to sort out the problem. Better to do that under a lower base-time window, the sooner the better. Okay, but such problems almost will all apply to inexperienced users. If you’re an annual member and have shown commitment to the system via doing some bike-angeling, why not give you a “45 minute” for one tier and a a”60 minute” for a higher tier? A symbol of trust.

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