On 17/12/2018 9:28 p.m., John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 17 Dec 2018 18:50:17 -0500, Joy Beeson
wrote:


Saturday's Times-Union says that the "Bike Share" bikes were scheduled
to be picked and stored this weekend. They were still in the rack
when I last passed by, but I don't think I came that way yesterday.

Putting them away for the winter makes it definite that they are
strictly for the tourists. As if the lack of facilities for one-way
trips hadn't already made that plain. I spoke to a representative of
the folks pushing "bike share" at some event last summer, and said "We
need to have more racks than bicycles . . . " He truncated my
statement after "racks" and launched his canned speech about how we
need lots more stations, each shoe-horned absolutely full of very
expensive bikes.

I'm all for more docking stations, but if they intended this program
for transportation, they would get the bikes for the new stations by
taking one or two from each of the existing stations, leaving people
who want to ride from one station to another a place to park.

Does the bike share scheme actually work there? I ask as they seem to
have bike share system in Bangkok, at least I pass by a "docking
station" on the way to my LBS. But I've never seen anyone actually
riding a "share bike".


In Montreal they are everywhere. The question was always whether they
made money. Even with heavy usage they had problems with that but I
think it was more mismanagement than anything else. It looks like they
are finally paying for themselves.