Anyway, I doubt the utility of bike sharing because there can never be enough bikes. Lots of traffic is modal at times of the day (heading to work; going shopping; heading home) so bikes end up clumped. You can't depend upon there being a bike available, so you have to be prepared to walk. That's workable in dense cities only.
I know what you mean re: reliability, but you also can't doubt that utility to all those riders that took the bikes and left the rack empty!
Matching the supply of bikes to demand is an interesting problem. The good systems try to address clumping by "re-balancing." In DC, they'd have vans that would move bikes to keep up with demand patterns.[1]
Also, as you've said, integrating bike shares with alternatives (like walking or transit) mitigates the reliability issue somewhat.
I don't deny the utility of bikes. But does 'sharing' just become 'giving bikes away to early commuters'? Because essentially the same people are getting the neighborhood bikes every day.
Because the total capital cost would be very high and the marginal benefit of extra bikes very low. The same reason we don't produce larger numbers of other capital goods.
Just because there are spikes, doesn't mean that no sharing can occur; e.g. people commuting from east to west at 0800, while someone else might commute in the opposite direction at 0900.
Also, the commuting bikes would be available at the city centre for most of the day, allowing people who need to move around during the day to reuse them.
Anyway, I doubt the utility of bike sharing because there can never be enough bikes. Lots of traffic is modal at times of the day (heading to work; going shopping; heading home) so bikes end up clumped. You can't depend upon there being a bike available, so you have to be prepared to walk. That's workable in dense cities only.