Article on bicycle sharing from the Financial Times

Makes a couple points.

1. To me the most important is that providing access to bikes isn't enough to get people taking up cycling for transportation.

2.  They suggest that dockless bikes are more flexible and this could lead to a rise in systems that don't use docks.

I disagree.  There is no question that dockless is more convenient.  But it supports vandalism and bikes (or scooters) tend to be deposited at the ends of the system or even beyond.  For example, how yesterday, I saw this Zagster bike from College Park in front of a house in Petworth--the bike is about 7 miles from where it's supposed to be.


It reminded me of when I was a child and how supermarkets had to have vans to wrangle shopping carts that were deposited around a community, far away from the store.

The cost in vandalism and reduction in uptime usage from docklessness may be greater than the value in convenience.

And from the standpoint of using public resources, is it better to provide greater access, thus allowing the bikes (scooters) to be deposited elsewhere and to be vandalized, or is it better to focus use where it is more likely the bikes and scooters will be more highly used, and to reduce vandalism?

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Just came across an article in Metro Magazine (a transit trade publication), "Micromobility: the missing link between people and cities," which says that the average e-bike share trip is 3 miles, which is double that of a traditional pedal bike share trip, thereby making it more likely that an e-bike share can be used to capture a car trip.