urbanMSP

Wouldn't the solution to "dockless" problems be to have virtual docks as corrals in the street itself? Replace one car space with 10+ bike spaces.

So basically a docked system minus the kiosk and the bays that lock the bike up. Not a bad idea by any means. It sort of shifts the cost from the kiosks to the bikes which would need to be able to detect if they’ve been locked in the proper area. It would be interesting to see a study on which is more cost-effective at large-scale.

Part of why I mentioned the cost of stations above is that, somewhat cynically, I wonder if resistance to removing street parking is a bigger limiting factor on docked systems than the cost of docks. If so, virtual docks don’t really solve the problem.

Bird Dock-less Electric Scooters launched today in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and Roseville. Used one to go from Target Field to my work in the North Loop. Was really easy to use.

If you want to try it for free, use my code WOEXLX

That's the Nice Ride/Motivate plan. The difficulty with that model is that you need a *lot* of those virtual docks to have the kind of coverage or last-mile usability that a truly dockless system can have. Nice Ride has talked about having 500 of these at launch, which sounds like a lot, but here's 500 dots scattered randomly on a map of Minneapolis:



Obviously they would be denser in some areas and less dense in some areas, not totally random like here. (Plus, not in lakes or rivers.) But that still leaves a long walk for a lot of users from virtual dock to destination.

Yeah, we'll need more like 1000 or 1500 virtual docks for this scheme to actually work.

Bird Dock-less Electric Scooters launched today in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and Roseville. Used one to go from Target Field to my work in the North Loop. Was really easy to use.

If you want to try it for free, use my code WOEXLX

Thanks for the code! I'm looking forward to using this.

On a similar note, I was recently in Berlin and they had multiple bike share operators (Mobike, OFO, Lime) and I found it incredibly useful and didn't really feel that bikes were littering sidewalks like people fear.

And I was recently in Seattle, and found that they were littering sidewalks like people fear. So, [shrugs].

And I was recently in Seattle, and found that they were littering sidewalks like people fear. So, [shrugs].

Education is key here, because these should be completely dockless. It really helps with the first mile and last mile problem. And putting restrictions on it to designated zones would defeat the purpose.

Also comparing a European city to American cities is just ehhhhhh, Europeans care so much more over Americans.

Wouldn't the solution to "dockless" problems be to have virtual docks as corrals in the street itself? Replace one car space with 10+ bike spaces.

So basically a docked system minus the kiosk and the bays that lock the bike up. Not a bad idea by any means. It sort of shifts the cost from the kiosks to the bikes which would need to be able to detect if they’ve been locked in the proper area. It would be interesting to see a study on which is more cost-effective at large-scale.

Part of why I mentioned the cost of stations above is that, somewhat cynically, I wonder if resistance to removing street parking is a bigger limiting factor on docked systems than the cost of docks. If so, virtual docks don’t really solve the problem.

Some places are already using bike share systems where the "cost" has been shifted to to the bikes. Cleveland, Ohio's UH Bikes requires you lock to a station or within 100 feet of it. Or, for a small cost, you can leave the bike anywhere. It's an interesting model.

And I was recently in Seattle, and found that they were littering sidewalks like people fear. So, [shrugs].

Education is key here, because these should be completely dockless. It really helps with the first mile and last mile problem. And putting restrictions on it to designated zones would defeat the purpose.

Also comparing a European city to American cities is just ehhhhhh, Europeans care so much more over Americans.

Many things that we think are education or culture problems are actually partially design problems. For instance, it turns out that narrow streets are way more effective at getting people to slow down than yelling at them about speed limits is.

I think the onus for keeping bikes out of the streets and sidewalks is firmly on the people designing the system.

Do you mean the responsibility is on the company creating the shareable product, or on the company engineering and building cities?


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Do you mean the responsibility is on the company creating the shareable product, or on the company engineering and building cities?


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The "bike share system" in this case is a combination of factors under the bike share company's control (number of bikes, number of docks (if any), locations of docks, technology used for tracking and unlocking, prices, membership system, signage, etc.) and factors under local government's control (built environment, integration with bike infrastructure, permitting for permanent infrastructure like docks, control of street parking and ROW which could be allocated to bike share purposes, ordinances on how bike share systems must operate, possible subsidies, etc.).

Here’s an article I just happened to stumble upon. Apparently the city of Pasadena California is going to be withdrawing from the metro bike share.

The report sites Lowrider ship as one of the reasons. More importantly though, the report gives an idea of just how much it costs The city to maintain the bike share system.

https://la.curbed.com/2018/7/10/1754993 ... d-dockless



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I would expect a lowrider ship to take on a lot of water.

Saw an old dork cruising his scooter down the sidewalk in north loop today. If he had passed me directly i would have yelled at him. Nice ride users like to use sidewalks, too.

That’s a great point about nice ride users using sidewalks as well. Many people are trying to make it all about the dockless . If I had a dime for every time I have almost gotten taken out by a bicycle on the sidewalk, I would have at least $20.

I think many times people ride them on the sidewalks because they don’t feel like the streets are safe. I can understand that; with the speed at which vehicle k traffic is traveling, I wouldn’t necessarily feel safe unless I had my own protected Lane. Just another reason why it is critical that we continue our investment in protected bike lanes.

Although, maybe we should think about changing the name to protected nonvehicular lanes.


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Although, maybe we should think about changing the name to protected nonvehicular lanes.

Lane categorization is mostly about speed (although perhaps size & density, too).

The difference between a sidewalk and a “bike” lane is not only average speed (2-3 mph vs 8-10 mph) but also max speed (4-5 mph vs 11-20 mph) and minimum speed (1 mph vs 5 mph) and even whether it’s OK to stop or not (it’s perfectly fine to stop on a sidewalk, say to window shop, chat with friends, or get a drink or food; but it’s never OK to stop in a bike lane). That’s probably why joggers/runners run between the ped lane and bike lane at Bde Maka Ska—they don’t want to have to stop for people chatting or dogs peeing or whatever.

It’s almost like we need a continuous space for people & vehicles, where the faster ones just stay to the left.

I'd be fine with banning electric / electric-assist vehicles (bicycles, scooters, etc.) from sidewalks, citywide. Wheelchairs exempted of course.

Banning scooters and ebikes from sidewalks won't actually solve the problem, any more than the ban on sidewalk riding in commercial areas does. Criminalization is a lazy solution to a hard problem. If people don't feel safe riding in the street, make the streets safe.

It's already illegal to ride motorized foot scooters on sidewalks: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/169.225

§Subd. 2.Sidewalk and passenger prohibition. No person may operate a motorized foot scooter upon a sidewalk, except when necessary to enter or leave adjacent property. No person may operate a motorized foot scooter that is carrying any person other than the operator.

So it's clear Bird does not care about St. Paul's request to remove the scooters. I pass by a "nest" every day in front of the Ordway on my way to work. Not a huge surprise they're following the Uber/Lyft model (though it's slightly different because Minneapolis and St. Paul have already said they welcome the scooters and just want regs in place).

One thing I'm finding odd: St. Paul not only has more nodes (downtown, Frogtown, Summit/Grand) for scooters, but they also seem to spread out more throughout the city. Meanwhile, all of Minneapolis' scooters seem to be concentrated downtown with them fanning slowly into NE/SE toward the U. But pretty much none of them head toward Uptown.

TBH, it kind of reminds me of when Car2Go was here. I used it pretty regularly when I lived in Marcy-Holmes, because finding one was easy! But once I moved to Whittier, they were literally never around, so I think I used them twice in the year or two that Car2Go was still functioning. That pattern in distribution seems to be mimicked for the scooters.