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0 pointsbunderbunder8y ago0 comments

Your example actually makes me feel even worse about dockless bike sharing. If 600 people take a bike to a train station in my city and then leave them there, that would completely block access to the train station, use of the sidewalk around it, and possibly part of the street in front.

I don't know if docks are an essential part of the formula - I'm a bit worried about how inherently monopolistic the dock model is - but the dockless model seems like it is inherently in conflict with the idea of keeping the public right-of-way clear for public use. Real estate around places like train stations and major destinations is scarce, and companies really shouldn't have unlimited ability to use that space for storing their equipment, free of charge.

I suppose the city or private property owners could reserve the right to collect nuisance bikes and hold them for bond, sort of like towing improperly parked cars. If bike sharing companies hold the person who got the bike "towed" responsible for any fees resulting from where they left the bike, similar to what would happen with a car share program, then maybe that would do the trick.

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Symbiote8y ago· 2 in thread

> keeping the public right-of-way clear for public use

Plenty of railway stations (plenty of streets!) surround themselves with car parking, which is a much less efficient use of space compared with bicycle parking.

Here [1] is above the underground Nørreport station in Copenhagen. Not the main station, but the second busiest. Lots of designated bicycle parking, but the latent demand is probably higher than what's available. At some point, the hassle of finding a place to leave the bicycle outweighs the delay with simply walking through the city centre, just like driving a car.

"Nuisance" bicycles get damaged, so there's pressure not to leave them in the way. In the proper bike rack, or within an area of bike racks, or leaning against a building, seems to count as a proper area. Anywhere else, the bike might get knocked over and not righted. Then the wheels end up tacoed.

But really, for any city that isn't Copenhagen or Amsterdam, converting some car parking spaces into 8-10 bicycle spaces each should leave plenty of room for bicycles.

[1] https://pricetags.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/norreport-5.jp...

Symbiote8y ago

Follow up: at my rough estimate, there are about 1,500 bicycle spaces at Nørreport Station in Copenhagen.

bunderbunderOP8y ago

So that might work for some cities. In Chicago, where I live, the open space surrounding most train stations is literally just the sidewalk. A few train stations also serve as hubs for the buses, and those have enough space for that amount of bike storage, but they're a definite minority.

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