Dockless Bikeshare – The Dockpocalypse Nears

[skins_brew]

@dasgeh 166848 wrote:

I think the issue is that we have a really good (though not perfect) docked bikeshare system already, and there’s a fear that dockless could come around for long enough to kill the docked system, but then go belly up because of (insert reason here), leaving us with no bikeshare.

We’re going to talk about this at the next BAC meeting – Monday, November 6, 7pm 2100 Clarendon Blvd – and (spoiler alert) I’m going to ask whether there’s any room to ask if CaBi can introduce some of the best parts of the dockless systems — e.g. a framelock that allows someone to park anywhere (possibly for an added fee); eassist.

I am a fairly new CaBi user, and in my short 6 weeks of use, I consider it to be extremely unreliable. So much that I am probably just going to lock my junk bike up down here and use that.

Turning CaBi into a dockless version would require a decent amount of resources. You need not just a locking mechanism, but also a slew of electronics to track the bike and interact with the lock, and then you are going to need a bunch of added functionality on the backend/app/server to support the dockless feature.

[elbows]

I haven’t read through the dockpocalypse discussion and I haven’t used them yet, but I’m not sure I would agree that we have a “really good” bikeshare system. I’ve been a member for 5 years or so and while I think the bikes are decent (though seat issues vex me), the customer service is good, and the technology is helpful, I find that close to 40% of my desired rides are thwarted by stations being full or empty. Three years ago, it was 20%. Below is a picture of what the stations look like right now in the middle of the day. If you are in Tysons, Reston or a number of other places, you are ok for getting or dropping a bike. However, in almost all of DC (except for east of the river) and most of the orange line in Arlington, stations are either full or empty. I have tried to share this with them and ask them to consider better rebalancing methods or incentives, but it just gets worse. I agree that dockless could threaten cabi but I think cabi needs to be better.

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[Judd]

@Drewdane 166820 wrote:

A few of the responses on this thread make me scratch my head.

Which ones?

[lordofthemark]

@skins_brew 166852 wrote:

I am a fairly new CaBi user, and in my short 6 weeks of use, I consider it to be extremely unreliable. So much that I am probably just going to lock my junk bike up down here and use that.

Turning CaBi into a dockless version would require a decent amount of resources. You need not just a locking mechanism, but also a slew of electronics to track the bike and interact with the lock, and then you are going to need a bunch of added functionality on the backend/app/server to support the dockless feature.

I have, I think, always found a CaBi bike when I needed one – the only time I faced an empty station was once near the Mall, and I found a bike at another nearby station. I have been dock block a couple of times, but things always worked out more or less. I have not been relying on CaBi to commute, though I sometimes do use it with some urgency. I have also used dockless once, here, and the semi dockless once in Albany. Here, the dockless bike I wanted was simply not to be found despite showing up on the app (maybe locked indoors?) . In Albany, with semi dockless, I have seen an empty dock at least once, in just a few days of observation.

As an advocate in Alexandria, I would be very reluctant to suggest slowing the rollout of new CaBi stations based on the promise of dockless. My concern is not so much that CaBi goes away and then dockless goes away too, but that CaBi goes away (in a place like Alexandria, because antibike CaBi haters seize on the availability of dockless), and that dockless, though very useful for some, does not provide all the benefits that we are looking for from CaBi.

[lordofthemark]

@elbows 166854 wrote:

I haven’t read through the dockpocalypse discussion and I haven’t used them yet, but I’m not sure I would agree that we have a “really good” bikeshare system. I’ve been a member for 5 years or so and while I think the bikes are decent (though seat issues vex me), the customer service is good, and the technology is helpful, I find that close to 40% of my desired rides are thwarted by stations being full or empty. Three years ago, it was 20%. Below is a picture of what the stations look like right now in the middle of the day. If you are in Tysons, Reston or a number of other places, you are ok for getting or dropping a bike. However, in almost all of DC (except for east of the river) and most of the orange line in Arlington, stations are either full or empty. I have tried to share this with them and ask them to consider better rebalancing methods or incentives, but it just gets worse. I agree that dockless could threaten cabi but I think cabi needs to be better.

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can’t read that, but went to the CaBi site, and the overwhelming majority of stations in DC and orange line arlington had at least one bike, and at least one empty dock. The ones that were either 100% empty or full, were mostly walking distance to ones that were not. The biggest problem of empty stations is in Adams Morgan / Mount Pleasant, where it does seem the system is under stress. Maybe a better rebalancing model is needed, or maybe just a few more stations in those neighborhoods , but I think the overall system remains quite useful (I note in the City of Alexandria there is only one station that is 100% empty, and none that are 100% full)

[KLizotte]

I’ve seen the orange and green bikes in Pentagon City and a couple of orange bikes in Shirlington which I presume is outside of the approved zone. If they circulate a lot I think they are a good addition to the scene, but most of the ones I’ve seen seem to sit for 24+ hours, often on the sidewalk or some out of the way place making them look like abandoned bikes to the casual observer. Given how careless people are with Cabi bikes, I don’t have much faith the dockless bikes will stay in good shape or not wind up in the river or other places they don’t belong.

[scoot]

I find CaBi to be extremely reliable for my admittedly atypical ridership patterns. I’d guess about 95% of my rides proceed from my optimal origin to my optimal destination. The other 5% of the time I either start or end at a less convenient station, but there is always something available within a fairly short walk. My CaBi experience has been positive enough that I use it for almost all of my commuting and utility cycling nowadays. My bikes stay home unless I’m riding for recreation or unless my destination is outside CaBi zone.

That said, the CaBi data do clearly show supply/demand problems for more popular routes and times. There is a lot of latent demand that the system currently lacks capacity to serve. I would be curious to learn how many of the dockless rides are between CaBi-accessible destinations (and especially when capacity is strained), as opposed to their other main selling point: location flexibility.

[Steve O]

Coming from a business perspective (feeling lost among all the policy nerds in DC), in general competition is a good thing. It can often force incumbents to up their game, or it replaces them. The process can be messy, though. Trying to overmanage this kind of transition may very well hinder the optimal outcome. I say let ’em all play and see what happens.

Back of the envelope thought experiment: There are 700,000 daily Metrorail trips and more than 400,000 daily Metrobus trips. That’s more than 1 million trips a day before we even start counting cars. 5% of those trips is 50,000+ — not an unreasonable goal for bikeshare. 5 trips per bike per day means 10,000 bikes. Ought to be room for more than one player. Let’s go for it.

“Oh!! but where will we park them all?!?” one asks. Well, where do the 250,000 cars that come into DC from MD & VA every day park? We’ve found room for those, so it hardly seems like a herculean task to find room for a few thousand bikes.

[Judd]

@Steve O 166864 wrote:

“Oh!! but where will we park them all?!?” one asks. Well, where do the 250,000 cars that come into DC from MD & VA every day park? We’ve found room for those, so it hardly seems like a herculean task to find room for a few thousand bikes.

Which is why I move every dockless bike I see into a curbside parking space.

[Judd]

@Judd 166870 wrote:

Which is why I move every dockless bike I see into a curbside parking space.

In all seriousness, DoBis have the potential to spur solutions like converting curbside car parking into curbside bike parking, which is rare, but also awesome when available.

[lordofthemark]

@Judd 166870 wrote:

Which is why I move every dockless bike I see into a curbside parking space.

When QOTM and I were visiting the Wharf, I saw a dockless bike in a bad spot blocking a sidewalk, and picked it up to move it to a slightly better spot and she said “don’t to that, if you aren’t taking it you shouldn’t touch it, you might get in trouble” I guess I shouldn’t have told her the story about the lime bike threatening to call the police?

[Judd]

@lordofthemark 166898 wrote:

When QOTM and I were visiting the Wharf, I saw a dockless bike in a bad spot blocking a sidewalk, and picked it up to move it to a slightly better spot and she said “don’t to that, if you aren’t taking it you shouldn’t touch it, you might get in trouble” I guess I shouldn’t have told her the story about the lime bike threatening to call the police?

You’re going to bike jail. Since Lime Bike hasn’t managed to move the bike parked at Hains Point for an entire week, I don’t think you’re likely to get caught for moving a bike three feet.

[skins_brew]

@Judd 166902 wrote:

You’re going to bike jail. Since Lime Bike hasn’t managed to move the bike parked at Hains Point for an entire week, I don’t think you’re likely to get caught for moving a bike three feet.

Lime does seem to be having issues. I saw two limes parked at Union station literally every day last week. They were not showing on the map, so I assume they were OOC.

I don’t think you would get in trouble, especially now since this is in pilot mode. What law are you breaking by moving a private companies property that is sitting on public property?

[Judd]

@skins_brew 166905 wrote:

Lime does seem to be having issues. I saw two limes parked at Union station literally every day last week. They were not showing on the map, so I assume they were OOC.

I don’t think you would get in trouble, especially now since this is in pilot mode. What law are you breaking by moving a private companies property that is sitting on public property?

For what it’s worth, Lime also isn’t fun on Twitter. The Jump bike folks seem to have the best Twitter game.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dasgeh]

I’m kicking myself for not getting a pic of the coral of DoBis at ANC this morning. Clearly, there’s demand for bikeshare there.

[Author]

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