
How New York City's Bike Share Saved Itself - kevindeasis
http://www.fastcompany.com/3054254/most-creative-people/how-new-york-citys-bike-share-saved-itself
======
kazinator
Insufficient fender coverage for bad weather, oops:

[https://www.citibikenyc.com/meet-the-bike](https://www.citibikenyc.com/meet-
the-bike)

Both the front and back fender need to go way lower, e.g.
[https://janheine.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/singer1954.jpg](https://janheine.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/singer1954.jpg)

Your feet will get sprayed on that thing because of the poor front fender, and
your back will be sprayed because of the poor rear one. If you have a backpack
that sticks out, it's right the line of fire.

I can't believe they would replicate hundreds of bikes with this sort of
obvious issue (to anyone who knows anything about year-round commuting on a
bike).

~~~
acranox
Boston "solves" this problem by removing all the stations during the winter.
Okay, not all, they leave a few, but they take most of them away. The people
who use the Boston bike share, are fair weather riders. Most cyclists are. But
yeah, maybe a better bike would help encourage more riding. As a year round
rider in New England, there aren't very many of us, so it's not the bike
design that keeps people from riding, it's their attitudes towards the wet and
cold weather.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> Most cyclists are.

Most cyclists are in the US, yeah. In places with better infrastructure,
that's not necessarily true: [http://wintercyclingblog.org/2014/10/17/oulu-
finland-winter-...](http://wintercyclingblog.org/2014/10/17/oulu-finland-
winter-cycling-capital-of-the-world/)

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jbielick
This is a really great piece. There truly was a massive shift in optimism for
these systems when the New York and Chicago RFPs went out. I had my doubts
about the sheer scale of these systems accompanying a smooth rollout and
execution, but am thrilled to be mostly wrong.

I'd love to know what kind of engineering challenges and missteps occurred in
regards to station uptime, load-balancing bike availability, and reliability.
Sounds like they're on the right foot now, but the bike share fleet Management
software was an open field for a while. I believe Motivate Co is hiring Ruby
engineer in NY if anyone's interested.

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dsri
Things have gotten a lot better over the past year with the NYC bike share,
especially with maintenance, but there's still a ways to go.

Generally speaking, if you're commuting, bike docks (where you pick up and
drop off) are empty when you want a bike and full when you want to return one.

The official Citibike app is also terrible, and the data Citibike makes
available is often inaccurate (shows bikes or open slots when there aren't
any). The app "Bike NYC" is a good (free) alternative, but obviously limited
by data quality.

~~~
szx
I recommend Citymapper. It's been super reliable and pretty accurate (although
my impression may be colored by how bad the experience had been in previous
years).

~~~
kh_hk
Unless they access a different data feed [1] [2], both should be as
(in)accurate.

[1]:
[https://www.citibikenyc.com/stations/json](https://www.citibikenyc.com/stations/json)

[2]:
[https://member.citibikenyc.com/data/stations.json](https://member.citibikenyc.com/data/stations.json)

