I was a founding member of Seattle's "Pronto!" bike share program - a conventional system with docks - but it lost a lot of money and the city, which subsidized it, put a fork in it after briefly considering replacing it with a different subsidized system with electric-assist bikes. From the ashes of that subsidized system have arisen two competing unsubsidized systems - Lime and Spin - which both use a dockless model. The way that works is that the bikes have wheel locks that are unlocked when the bike is rented. Locking the wheel lock ends the rental. There are some trade-offs between the models, which mostly in my view skew in favor of the dockless systems.
With a dockless system, there is never the problem that a user will arrive at the dock closest to their destination only to find that they can't end the rental due to a full dock. There is also never the problem that the dock is further from the user's destination (as long as the destination is in the service area, which is the Seattle city limits for both systems) that they have a substantial hike to that destination - users park the bike wherever they can find empty sidewalk. There is no concept of membership - users install an app and pay only for each of the rides they take - both systems at $1/.5h. (There is also no escalating charge for longer rentals - each .5h segment is $1.) That lowers the barrier to entry for visitors, who only need to install and configure an app on their phones. On the downside, there is nothing to keep a malevolent passerby from chucking a bike into the Ship Canal, as the bikes aren't tethered to a dock or anything else between rentals. How substantial a problem that is, only time will tell, but evidently it has been a problem with the similar system in Manchester, and is a problem in Mountain View with Google's free bikes. First time I saw a dockless share system was several years ago in Kyoto, and I suspect they have very little problem there with vandalism, because Japan. I had a chance to see the systems in action during my Seattle trip this weekend, and I've attached photos of the bikes, which I didn't try as I had my own bike with me. I did install the Spin app, and it's simple both to configure and to use. Bikes of both systems were very prevalent in the neighborhoods I rode in, mostly along the Ship Canal (U District, Fremont, Ballard) and downtown. And people were riding them. Another issue is with helmets, use of which is required by law in King County. Neither Lime nor Spin offer helmets with their bike or as a distinct rental, while Pronto! provided them with each bike, along with a presumably expensive scheme for cleaning them. That's going to lead to rampant scofflaw behavior. Or, more accurately, continue rampant scofflaw behavior - even many people on their own bikes ignore the law. -- S. Rose
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