

Boston beats Silicon Valley when it comes to transit & bike sharing - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2012/03/16/bikes-and-business-can-cities-cycle-their-way-to-prosperity/

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descentintomael
I've never lived in Boston, but I've lived in SF and current live in the
Valley and I have to say that SF is awesome for public transit (when it's on
time) and SV is better for bike because of the bike lanes. SamTrans on the
peninsula is a joke, but the VTA and CalTrain are pretty good. They don't have
the extensive coverage of Muni in SF, but if you aren't willing to walk a few
blocks to get from a transit stop then you need a car.

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ondrae
Bike sharing is coming to San Francisco and the Valley this Summer.
[http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/bike-share-coming-to-
sf...](http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/bike-share-coming-to-sf-and-
silicon-valley-this-july/)

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droithomme
I've used this system in Minneapolis, which is almost identical to the costs
and station density here. It's OK for certain people I suppose. If you are a
local, it's better to bring your own bike. If you are visiting, the fees are
very high since you have to start paying extras for a few minutes overage.
Overages are easy to get because the stations are usually no where near where
you are going unless you are doing short tourist jaunts. So you end up walking
for 30 minutes to a bike, riding the bike for 15 minutes to a station roughly
in the direction you are going, parking to avoid the fee, transferring to a
new bike to continue, now you have to go further, then you get to closest
destination station, park, walk 30 minutes to actual destination, and reverse
to go home. Spend too long stuck at a red light and now you pay a fee for
late. Want to ride somewhere, drop something off, then come back? To save on
fees you have to factor in a bunch of stations and swaps, so a 40 minutes bike
ride round trip if you had your OWN bike is now 90 minutes including all the
walking to stations and swapping.

So just pay the fees. Or take the bus, which is cheaper and faster. Or rent a
car and be done with all this.

The idea such inefficient systems are being taxpayer funded in some cities is
offensive.

I agree with the other comment that it is quite difficult to navigate Boston
traffic with a bike since the city is not built to accomodate it for the most
part. Police are also highly aggressive, belligerant, uneducated, ignorant and
thuggish and risk of being arrested and harassed for not being in the correct
lane or whatever are significant.

~~~
kazevedo
I'm the CEO of a startup company that creates a different type of bike sharing
technology, viaCycle: www.viacycle.com

While you're right that bike sharing doesn't make sense for all commuters, the
idea that these systems are inefficient is actually incorrect. Yes, you have a
capital outlay to set the program up - just like you do for every subway, bus
system, and public road in the U.S. Often, these outlays are taxpayer funded.
However, once a bike system is running, it's cheaper than almost any other
form of transit. Capital Bikeshare in DC recovered almost all of it's
operating expenses last year. B-Cycle Denver pulled a profit. Compare that to
the T or almost any bus/metro agency in the country, which usually hover
around 30-40% cost recovery.

Hubway or NiceRide might not work for your situation, but it's effective and
affordable for a whole lot of people.

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wtvanhest
I live in Boston, and have lived in Silicon Valley. Biking in Boston is
downright scary.

Having a bike sharing program is great, but Boston needs to invest in more
dedicated bike lanes, and bike paths before it can get anywhere near SF in
bikability.

Plus you are visiting when its 40ish degress out, not 20 and the Hub system
isn't available in the winter.

~~~
andys627
SF != Silicon Valley

~~~
natch
That being said, Silicon Valley is very bike friendly.

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ck2
Wow it's a redbox for bikes, neat.

But unfortunately it would be destroyed and/or gross as hell in most cities
that I've lived in.

Nothing wrong with owning your own bike, $150 buys a really descent bike these
days.

~~~
freyfogle
This is the same line of reasoning many people put forward in London as well
(and before that Munich when I lived there). The reality is it works well. Yes
the occasional bike gets vandalized, but the system provides reliable
transportation for thousands of people every day.

It reminds me of the indoor smoking ban. Everywhere I live, people say "yes,
that's fine in X, but it will never work here." Then it comes and it works
fine.

~~~
ck2
Our city, well a private group of enthusiasts, tried making a free bike loan
program here and it failed horrible from theft and vandalism.

If there is a way to record people's info and/or financial responsibility,
maybe that is the key.

~~~
freyfogle
In my opinion your problem was being free.

Here in London it costs 45 GBP (about 65 USD) per year - you can also pay just
per trip. Either way it works out to very cheap, much cheaper than the tube,
bus, taxi, etc. but not free. You have to pay by card so they know who you
are. Also the bikes are big bulky bikes, the parts won't fit with normal
bikes. Based on the picture it looks like the Boston system is the same
company, their bikes and software are used in several cities.

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andrewem
Hubway has a real-time feed of bike availability [1]. I built a little web
site that shows the bike stations and T stations on a map [2], along with
real-time data for both bike and T stations. Bike stations with available
bikes are shown in green and ones without are red. Also, it's open source [3].

[1] <http://www.thehubway.com/data/stations/bikeStations.xml> [2]
<http://bikeboston.herokuapp.com/> [3] <https://github.com/amonat/bikeboston>

~~~
freyfogle
If you like that, feast your eyes on <http://bikes.oobrien.com>

~~~
andrewem
Very cool! Are you involved with that site?

I see it's got a map showing bike share docks in London (by default, with a
bunch of other cities available), with a circle for each docks whose size is
proportional to the size of the dock, and a color ranging from blue (for
empty) to red (for full), and the color scheme is configurable. And it's got a
neat graph showing the number of bikes in the dock over time for the last 24
hours.

One minor irritation is that the graph is overlaid on top of the distance
scale line (labeled "1km 1mi"), so it looks like that line is part of the
graph. Also, it'd be nice if the graph were labeled by time of day rather than
hours ago.

(One funny thing is the use of "scheme" even for the US pages, since as
Wiktionary notes "In the US, generally has devious connotations, while in the
UK, frequently used as a neutral term for projects: “The road is closed due to
a pavement-widening scheme.”".)

~~~
freyfogle
I can't take any credit for the site, I'm just a fan.

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mikeocool
As someone who spent a long time biking, driving, and taking public transit in
Boston this is sort of laughable.

A bike sharing program is a neat idea, but actually riding bikes in Boston is
a terrible experience. The roads are in bad shape, there are no bike lanes,
and the drivers are homicidal.

Public transit in Boston certainly isn't bad, it's better than most cities
I've lived in and it may very well be better than the valley. But the subway
is generally only helpful if you're going to and from downtown. If you say
live in Somerville and work in Allston, you're pretty much out of luck, unless
you're willing to transfer between the bus and the subway a few times.

In general I found having a car was a pretty key part of living in Boston.

~~~
ajross
The rail lines (red and green respectively) go straight through Somerville and
Allston. Obviously there are some places in both towns without nearby rail
access, but it's sort of a stretch to claim "multiple transfers" for that
ride.

The roads are in no worse shape than any other northeast city (potholes are a
fact of life in that climate). The drivers are agressive but broadly
competant. Maybe a better complaint would be lack of bike lanes, which is
true: old streets don't always fit them.

I grew up in Boston; lived, studied and worked there until I was 27; and never
once felt the need to own a car.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You simply don't take the Red Line to Park Street, change to the Green Line,
and ride out to Allston. That's utterly moronic. As I recall, you would take
the Red Line to Harvard Square and change to Bus 77 to Allston.

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ajross
Sigh. I wasn't doing mikeocool's transit planning, I was responding to the
assertion that you have "to transfer between the bus and subway a few times"
to get between Somerville and Allston. Whether it is "utterly moronic" to take
the subway into Boston seems to me to be situation dependent. If there's snow
on the ground and the buses are all running late, that's certainly the first
choice. If it's a nice day, you'd probably decide to just walk the half mile
across the river from Harvard Square.

Look: if you don't like Boston don't live there. The Bay Area is really nice
too and I liked it a lot. I'm currently really liking Portland. But flaming
about transit options in what AFAIK is the densest city in north america is
just dumb, sorry. Carless bostonians have absolutely no grounds for complaint.

