I'm not sure I understand why redistribution is necessary in London. In the morning, you'll need a lot of bikes at transportation centers, so commuters can ride them to work, and in the evening, you'll need a lot of bikes at transportation centers, so commuters can ride them back. But that's where the bikes will naturally be, if they're not redistributed. You would have to have a lot of extra kiosk slots to handle the surges back and forth, and that extra capacity would cost some money, but that doesn't sound like a really major problem.
Whatever London's experience might be, I'm not sure how it would apply to Madison. We don't have transportation hubs, at least downtown, and I wouldn't expect the bikes to be used heavily for commuting. If the system works well, I'd expect it to be used mostly for short trips throughout the day -- shopping, lunch, errands, campus trips from one class to another, etc. -- and these would redistribute the bikes naturally, without much intervention by management. I would expect usage patterns in cities our size to be different from larger cities like London or Paris. Does anybody know how B-Cycle has been working out in Boulder? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Rose" <[email protected]> To: "Kevin Luecke" <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 12:04:29 PM Subject: Re: [Bikies] City investing in Rental bikes 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. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
