It is my understanding that Trek is handling all maintenance and operations of the system, so Trek (or whomever they hire to do it) would cover this. >From what was presented last night, part of why Trek is interested in doing this is that it allows them to operate and manage a bike share system. They are selling this system, but have not handled operations on any of the systems they sold. By operating the system in Madison, they can observe how things actually work, what problems arise, and tweak the system as they see fit.
Kevin On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Scott Rose <[email protected]> wrote: > On 01/25/2011 09:37 AM, Kevin Luecke wrote: > > * The GPS units and the calorie counting is a bit gimmicky for the >> >> end-user, but is an integral part of the system for other reasons. >> The system software can track where bikes are and how full the >> various stations are based on the GPS readings. This allows users >> to pull up a webpage or app before they go grab a bike to make >> sure there are bikes at the station they are headed too. This also >> allows staff to redistribute bikes as needed. >> > > Redistributing the bikes seems like a potentially costly part of the > program. I've read that in London, the bikes are used by a lot of daily > commuters, which causes them to pulse out in the morning from transportation > centers to employment centers and back again at night. That leads to two > negative effects: it can be very difficult for a renter to find a free slot > in a rack close to one of those transportation centers at certain times of > the day, and it has led to a greater-than-expected need to redistribute the > bicycles, which, if my understanding is correct, is performed in the case of > London by city staff driving lorries. In the case of Madison-- who will be > responsible for redistributing bicycles? Is there an alligator in that moat? > > Having said all that, I really like the sound of this program, particularly > for certain use cases. I regret that the well-intentioned provincial > legislature here has screwed the pooch for a similar program in the lower > mainland by passing a mandatory helmet law. > -- Kevin Luecke Lead Planner, Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin www.bfw.org 608-251-4456 <http://www.bfw.org/> <http://bikefed.blogspot.com/> <http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#%21/bike.fed.wi?ref=ts> <http://twitter.com/search?q=BikeFed> <http://delicious.com/network/BikeFed>
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