Rebalancing – Who monitors?

[elbows]

I’d like to suggest to my town/county that they pay some attention to rebalancing metrics.

Some stations are regularly empty and/or full, and it kind of undermines the reliability of the system. I regularly walk 2 miles getting home from metro when I can’t use CaBi (and the buses are too infrequent). I’d like to se more attention to the reliability of the system.

I get that no station is always going to be eternally half empty, but that’s why you design the metrics well. (And maybe also angel points, etc, but that comes after metrics.)

Do other local governments (or the COG) or whatever pay attention to station metrics at all?

I know the stations are partially funded by various government agencies.

Topic

[trailrunner]

I used to rely on CaBi for the last leg of my commute. The station I used was often out of bikes. I used to send reports but I got the impression they did not care one bit.

[RideTheWomble]

I’ve had trouble, too. The other day, I needed a bike at Langston Blvd and N Woodstock St., but there were zero bikes there. I went down the hill to W&L High School, but there were zero bikes there.

I tweeted at Cabi, and they replied with cheery gratefulness that I’d helped them out. They said they’d notify their rebalancing team.

I think the reply was more PR than action.

I just checked those two stations. 1 bike at Langston and N. Woodstock, and 1 bike at W&L. That doesn’t make me feel like there’s a huge new emphasis on rebalancing.

It feels like fewer resources are being allocated to rebalancing since Lyft took over as operator of the system. It’s too bad, because I used the HECK out of Cabi back when I thought I could rely on it.

[Steve O]

Try sending an email to BikeArlington.

[peterw_diy]

@RideTheWomble 219944 wrote:

I’ve had trouble, too. The other day, I needed a bike at Langston Blvd and N Woodstock St., but there were zero bikes there. I went down the hill to W&L High School, but there were zero bikes there.

I tweeted at Cabi, and they replied with cheery gratefulness that I’d helped them out. They said they’d notify their rebalancing team.

I think the reply was more PR than action.

Absolutely. They don’t need random people tweeting at them to identify empty stations. They’ve had good realtime system data for years … data that shows 46 CaBi stations currently have zero bikes of either type available.

[RideTheWomble]

@peterw_diy 219948 wrote:

Absolutely. They don’t need random people tweeting at them to identify empty stations. They’ve had good realtime system data for years … data that shows 46 CaBi stations currently have zero bikes of either type available.

Right. I’ve used the API. The information is available, and there’s a large community of developers who have done extensive analysis of the data to identify trends and do predictions. I have no hard evidence the new operator is, “optimizing,” their rebalancing operation by just not spending a lot doing it, so I can’t support the allegation. My anecdata sure makes it feel that way, though.

[Author]

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