This is a puzzle to me. Uber faces some critical issues ahead. If they can solve them, the bikes will be a rounding error. If they can't, the bike business won't be enough to save them. Why add the complexity when they could buy or build something later?
I especially can't figure out why the Jump CEO would do it. The odds of their work surviving to the 10 year mark seems so small. It reminds me of something like Dodgeball. (For those who don't remember, it was a company basically like Foursquare, but years before. Google bought it and did little with it. Eventually the founders got tired of it, left Google, and started the same company again.)
I think you may underestimate the impact e-bikes are going to have on major (non-car centric) cities. They'll likely reshape cities significantly as infrastructure gets improved for biking. You can get significant traffic density improvements by pushing bikes instead of cars, and e-bikes make this more accessible.
I've been cycling in SF for more than a decade and am a SF Bike Coalition member, so I doubt I'm underestimating it all that much.
But even if you are right I don't understand why Uber is eager to buy in now. If this takes off so much that Uber is obliged to get in on the action, they can wait. It strikes me as like Apple with MP3 players or smartphones or smartwatches: it's cheaper and easier to let somebody else prove the market and then just come in and crush everybody.
If you've been bicycling in the city for more than a decade, then you're definitely underestimating it. In that "over a decade", you've internalized the mountain of suck that bicycling is, sometimes, and have accepted that as "just how it is to bicycle in the city". Jump, in particular, doesn't have to contend with some of those.
In particular, you've had to lock up your bike and still had it/parts stolen - not your problem if it's not your bike. Not being your bike also takes care of the maintenance - not your bike means it's not your problem! (I mean, don't go around trashing their bikes for the sake of it, but it means you don't have to worry about the derailleur alignment or tire/rim sizes.) There's the logistics of biking - if you go out, but take a taxi home, then you have to come back to get your bike later. Jump means you don't have to, and if you don't bike back, you can take an Uber instead.
You've definitely had a car almost kill you - likely more than once. The new protected lanes that are popping up all over the city don't make that problem go away, but it's a big step forwards.
Imagine having never experienced being almost killed by a car.
Finally, there's that whole pedaling thing. Not to be (further) presumptuous, but I'm guessing somewhere in the 10+ years, there's a stop sign that's been run. If you stop, then you have to start again. That gets old pretty quickly on any street with stop signs every block. Jump bikes being electric makes that stop being such a workout.
None of these problems are truly insurmountable - as your experience proves! There are other problems w/ bicycling that Jump doesn't solve, but Uber's bet is the kind of friction that Jump does solve, will make this purchase profitable for them, $2 for 30 mins at a time.
Finally, since Uber knows where its riders have been dropped off, it's able to use that data to move Jump bikes around the city to optimize their placement.
If you wait until something's a "sure" thing, then it's too late - the price has gone up, so there's less money to be made. The time to buy BTC was 10 years ago, not now, but if you think it's this weird sketchy thing now, 10 years ago it was E-gold 2.0.
I live in a city with ubiquitous (non-E) shared bicycles (Shenzhen), and unfortunately maintenance does become your problem... You have to go from bike to bike performing basic maintenance tests (is the brake working? Is the chain non-rattly? Seat adjustable? Anything broken?) and still sometimes end up with a non-working bike that doesn't work quite right.
For the bike sharing company it's an even bigger problem (the two/three remaining companies employ an army of staff to keep moving the bikes to where they are needed and attempt some basic maintenance, literally a team on every street corner).
Ah, the getting on a public bike ritual. But I imagine that this is a problem that could be solved by more money, however I have no idea where the bike sharing company would get it except if they hike the prices.
Mobike in China are on about their 10th version of their bikes. The very latest one seems to be a massive improvement on their earlier ones so far, so it seems they are getting there.
Most of their money has been coming from VCs so far...
I've been using BikeShare and have friends with electric bikes, so again, I don't think I'm underestimating it as much as you expect.
But again, even if you are exactly right, it won't be too late for Uber. Either they'll be successful, and so have plenty of money, or they'll be troubled, and this business won't be nearly enough to save them. And in the meantime, it's at best a giant distraction, and at worst they smother it, as happens all the time with large-company acquisitions.
Compare with Apple. They were 3 years behind on smartwatches, 4 years behind on MP3 players, 6 on smartphones. It didn't matter, because they had skills, assets, and market power. It was better for them to wait and let others prove the market and then come in when the shape of consumer need and likely solution was clearer. I think the same would be true if Uber were a successful, stable company.
Also a cyclist, and I think one of the reasons share bikes haven't taken off as much in SF is the terrain. Bikes are a convenient way to get from place to place, but who wants to get sweaty and scared riding around SF hills?
And that’s precisely why Jump bikes are awesome in a city like SF. The electric assist is just enough of a boost that you feel the hills but not so much that you’re breaking out in a sweat going over them.
Totally fair! They're taking off in Europe right now which will help set the tone for how cities can accommodate these bikes. I think incidents like shutting down the L line in New York will help propel e-bikes/scooters forward much faster than anticipated.
Of course, that may not translate to every city but I think it will move across the US much faster than pure dockless schemes.
For your question on why not? I bet being able to move a significant number of trips by volume from your competitors back onto your platform is well worth the cost and mind share that you could build. (e.g. no bikes available? How about you take this uber for x% off instead!)
That would take a lot of political will to do something like that though and it would take YEARS! I don't think the US is a great market (right now) for city-bikes. Outside of maybe Manhattan & SF I can't think of any major city where a bike would take you places faster/better than another way of transportation would. When you consider all the hassles that biking as a transportation comes with, I doubt this has any large potential (compared to the Uber scale). Could be wrong though. I actually really hope I am!
Seattle? Portland? Minneapolis/St. Paul? You might consider bicycling while you travel more. In Seattle alone, OFO, LimeBike, and Spin are all competing.
American bicycle infrastructure is behind, but it exists. I don't own a car. I get around those cities on bike without issue. It's as fast or faster than a car in many cases and I'm peddling the old fashioned way (with legs).
Minneapolis? As someone who commuted via bike "before it was cool" in Minneapolis I want to ask what you're smoking :)
The density simply isn't there, and the infrastructure is pretty horrible aside from some exceedingly small areas of the city proper, and of course the amazing bike paths (which typically are not useful for anything other than leisure). If that's what you consider a high bar for "bike infrastructure" in the US, I think the situation is pretty dire.
I moved to Chicago largely due to transit-related reasons, and the bike commute here isn't exactly stellar - but it's at least night and day compared to the average suburban-oriented city in the US.
That said, spending significant time in the Netherlands may have raised the bar too far for me to really think of any US bike infrastructure as being much more than an afterthought at best.
Maybe you need to visit to check up on the state of affairs in the 'cool' era. I biked as primary transit in Minneapolis 2007-2014. The city is commonly ranked in the top ten for bike infrastructure in the U.S. (as you pointed out, admittedly a low bar).[1][2] I've been biking in Chicago for 5 years now and if you're going between any two points that don't happen to be connected by one of the non-deathtrap segments of lakefront, the cycle infrastructure here is at least a decade behind where Minneapolis is at. Most of it due to generally dismal road maintenance which impacts cyclists much harder than motorists, but lots of tremendously unsafe shared road conditions, too.
I don't understand biking in Chicago or Minneapolis. What do you do when it rains, or snows, which is like 2/3 of the year? And after that it's 95 degrees and 98% humidity. There are probably no more than 30 to 45 days a year where it's really decent biking weather.
LOL. There are probably 15 days a year that a truly inhospitable to biking in Minneapolis. On those days the hardcore riders go out anyway, and the rest work from home or catch the bus. Snow isn't a big deal except immediately after it falls, because the city does a damn good job cleaning it up, at least on the major streets. Your pants will get filthy, so plan to change them (or wear snowpants). These are things people in the North deal with even when not biking; have you tried scraping the windshield of a car that's completely covered in half-frozen puddle slush? When it's falling you can bike too, just need to take it slow (same as motorists do) and maybe pick an alternate route that's more secluded from car traffic. I actually think it's kind of fun to slip around in the fresh snow and fall on my ass, while I never much enjoyed spinning the tires on my car. I may just be weird though.
There's nothing out-of-ordinary about the amount of rainfall in Minneapolis or Chicago so not sure where you're coming from with that one, but you just wear a rain jacket and, again, have a dry change of clothes if you're going somewhere that demands formal dress. In Chicago I've found the wind has a much bigger impact on my biking than precipitation.
Well, in Chicago you pretty much bike on the good days. The infrastructure isn't great (like noted by OP in his followup to me) - but the density of the city makes it pretty workable if not entirely enjoyable. You can typically get around on bike on the good weather days faster than most other forms of transit - largely because you're only a few miles from anywhere you need to be.
So in Chicago the typical bicycle commuter commutes on the nice days (maybe half the year?) and will take public transit the rest.
In Minneapolis I commuted via bike for financial reasons so it was mostly a "suck it up, buttercup" sort of deal. You brought changes of clothes, outfitted your bike for the weather, and otherwise just made do. Honestly summer was worse than winter because I sweat a lot in heat. I cannot imagine living in that area without a car voluntarily. You just cut yourself off from far too much - but I suppose this was pre-Uber so the situation is a little bit more tenable.
Public transit in Minneapolis is basically for poor folks or those with DUIs - so it's not exactly stellar and usually not an option for most folks living in the metro area.
Edit: The follow up of "maybe 15 bad days" you had is for what most would call hardcore riders. The number of days the casual fair-weather bicycle commuter rides is far, far, less. I feel pretty comfortable saying this considering my family was known as crazies because we'd bike throughout the winter no matter the weather.
> Public transit in Minneapolis is basically for poor folks or those with DUIs
What? No.
I'm in Minneapolis. I live downtown. I find using the bus and light rail far more convenient and easy then a car. Let alone the baggage a car brings such as maintenance, insurance, upfront costs, and not to mention parking.
Is this using a properly sorted MTB (switching to fat snow tyres in the winter months)?
Or the heavy Boris bikes or the small wheeled shopper style that a lot of these bike share companies use and most of these bikes are probably badly maintained.
Not sure who you are but I bet we were friends. Left MPLS for SF. MPLS is "the best city" for nearly anything if you ask a local. Too bad they wasted the Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot $20M on shitty latex paint bike lanes at $75,000 per block.
They treated it like a slush-fund with no accountability. All of the projects were late and gave a feeling of "a little paint cost how much?" Now they're spending more money to make better bike lanes they could have built in the first place. That's a MPLS thing though. They're always trying to reinvent the wheel instead of using the good infrastructure that's been tried other places.
I think your experience in the Netherlands is coloring your opinion a bit. Minneapolis is consistently ranked one of the best cities for biking in the US.
Regarding Seattle and Portland, while it's true there are bike share programs, I don't see them used very often. The few who are using the bikes are either tourists (minority) or the homeless on stolen bikes. Additionally, just about half the limebikes that I see are abandoned under bridges or broken and unusable.
Portland itself is a very bikeable city and a lot of time/energy is spent to improve and grow this infrastructure. Traffic is getting to the point where cycling is faster for inner-city trips, but as I live outside of the city it's a non-starter because public transportation from my end of town is severely limited.
Seattle doesn't seem nearly as bike friendly, and while it's certainly faster to bike or walk during rush hour, it doesn't seem nearly as safe as Portland. I certainly have no interest in cycling in Seattle, driving is bad enough.
I rode up Capitol Hill at 4:30PM every day last spring/summer, took me 10-15 minutes to get home from 2nd & Seneca and never had any safety issues. Drivers in Seattle are fairly aware of their surroundings with everyone walking randomly at all times and the city is adding new bike lanes often.
Going up the hill on a Lime, Spin, or Ofo...no way -- you see those at the bottom of every hill.
I'm in Seattle as well, I have to disagree. Drivers here are mostly clueless. I know many who bike or ride motorcycles, and they have many stories to tell about the cluelessness of Seattle drivers. It's a dangerous city to ride a bike.
I would argue it's fairly safe, especially comparing to rural areas. I now live south a few miles outside of the normal Seattle walking/biking and I've already experienced a few near-death situations, but didn't have any problems in my two years downtown. This is just a personal anecdote, but I still do feel people driving Seattle downtown & on the hill are fairly aware of bikers and people walking at any time they want.
If you live on the Burke Gilman trail, biking in Seattle can be pretty good. And they even have a bike lane over 520 now for those hardcore Microsoft bike commuters.
For most trips in Seattle more than half a mile and less than 5 miles in distance biking is the fastest way to travel. It stays competitive for east-west travel and places without mandatory parking minimums for longer distances.
los angeles is perfect for bike transport. it's sunny and doesn't get too hot or too cold most of the year (in the LA basin proper, the san fernando and inland valleys are a different story). the city government is pro bike path and installing more bike lanes every day. biking is faster during the 6 hours of rush hour a day. most amenities are within 2-3 miles (~15 minutes) of where you live. you can take your bike on buses and trains for the daily commute.
the biggest challenge is bike security (not getting it stolen). bike racks and locks are a poor solution if unattended. if we could put bike racks right in front of the gate attendant booths that most public parking garages have, it would be a much better deterrent to theft. and for residential buildings, you could have lockers or a locked bike storage room (possibly with security cameras too).
True, but generally folks live within 5 miles of 90% of the places they go.
Also, a bicycle can serve as a last-mile connector to the transit system - imagine someone who lives at Wilshire and La Brea but works in West Hollywood, and would like to take the Red Line, but doesn't want to lose an hour to walking.
the LA i live in (not at the beach) allows me to walk/bike/bus/train to basically anywhere i want to go, most of which is within 5 miles of where i live. when i need to go farther, i can take a lyft or rent a car.
but you gotta get over that perception of sprawl to realize how great LA is for multi-modal transport.
>"but you gotta get over that perception of sprawl to realize how great LA is for multi-modal transport"
multi-modal transport? You mean the bus? The bus in LA is a joke. Nobody wants to take the bus in LA - it takes way to long to get anywhere. The metro is notable in how little area it covesr. I think this map illustrates this well:
So what does that leave? Cars. You yourself even mentioned ""Lyft and renting a car." Owning a car, renting a car and calling a car are all car-centric modes of transport.
And LA doesn't have a perception of sprawl it is actually sprawl.
I biked around LA as a tourist, but the sprawl was so bad, that the majority of the time you spent in transit only to stop off at certain points. Biking in the Berkeley area is like night-and-day, where I don't have to sit on the bike for 10 min. to get to the next plaza. I'd do it again as I enjoy biking much more than driving, but I'm definitely more on the bike-nut side of things.
i can see that being a tourist in LA could be a little frustrating, especially on a bike. the major attractions like the getty, venice beach, k-town, hollywood, the tar pits/moma, the disney concert hall, disneyland, the huntington gardens, the forum, the hollywood bowl, beverly hills, LA live, the zoo/science center, watts towers, the sunset strip, malibu, etc. can be annoyingly far apart.
but as a resident i almost never do that kind of ping-ponging around town. you can find good food, drinks, and entertainment in each neighborhood so i typically hit up only one area of town on a given evening, depending on which friends i'm with (or visiting).
berkeley is nice and chill and bike-friendly, but it's also tiny compared to LA (18 vs 500 sq. miles).
Seattle seems like it's doing well with Ofo, Limebike, and Spin however it will never be a replacement for a car, and they're 40-70lb bikes that can't make it up Seattle's hills which makes them kind of useless outside of downtown. They are used often and I see people riding them all day down by the waterfront, especially in the late spring/summer.
I unfortunately don't see them being any kind of major replacement for anything in Seattle anytime soon unless the Mayor actually puts high tolls on downtown exits -- especially since we have fairly good public transit.
I'll throw Baltimore's name out there. They even have a Bike Share program (https://www.bmorebikeshare.com/), which is, interestingly enough, sponsored by Lyft.
There are a lot of cities with older areas which have gentrified into concert/eating/drinking-hang-out hubs. These areas weren't planned so they may be too spread out for foot traffic and adding bikes may increase travel in the area. People aren't about to bring their own bikes but if they're already there why not use them. And if the bike sharing startups prove to cities that people are willing to ride bikes cities, especially those with universities, may begin planning to have dedicated bike lanes. As drivers learn to look for bicyclists it will become safer and easier politically to plan for bicyclists. I'm all for it.
Sounds like what people said about Segway. Don't remember if it was Jobs, but somebody of approximately his tech reputation said "this will change the way we build cities."
Yes, the trouble is, the cities are already built. Basing your business model on cities spending a metric tonne of $$$ on reworking their city isn't going to work.
ebike sales are growing rapidly and in general will start to shape cities in europe very rapidly. That will trickle over to the US in a lot of the big cities that are already dense, and then shift over to the less dense but flatter cities (think LA!)
Living in SF these days and up until a week ago I thought the same way. I serendipitously had an opportunity to try a Bird electric scooter. I was heading to a meeting a few blocks away and one happened to be parked outside of the building I was leaving. It was far enough that I would have normally used Uber to get there but not far enough that I couldn't have walked if I didn't have to rush over. Long story short, I grabbed the App, started the scooter, and really enjoyed the ride over. It cost a fraction of the Uber ride and got me there faster.
I've been seeing these scooters popping up all over SF including Lime and Spin branded ones.
I hope to see more of them spring up as a viable alternative to using a car to get everywhere. Though I see the lack of helmets being included with these as a disaster waiting to happen.
Yea I've never seen anyone riding with a helmet on these scooters. U see them all over south park bear the ball park.
I've rode a personal electric scooter for over a year now and I can say a helmet is a must. The biggest dangers I've seen is clueless uber/ lyft drivers cutting you off (happens a lot) and pot holes / cracks in the pavement. They travel at 10+ mph so if you hit a big enough pot hole your going to eat it.
Yes, but is the US the area where the product will have the most revolutionary impact? In my view, I would target high density cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Delhi, Paris, etc.
Europe and Asia seem like the most important markets for the technology rather than the US which is littered with sprawled out cities.
The US is the least penetrated market when it comes to bikes. Uber changed the way people interact with taxis/cabs enough to make a cultural impact in many parts of the world, and it has the clout to do the same with bikes. I think it's a good diversification on their part, kind of insuring against the future where driverless cars won't necessarily become the de facto universal means of transit worldwide as the rest of America/SV seems to envision.
Paris has already had a few experiments with dockless bikes, while the docked biked offered by the city are not available because of global replacement done by the lowest bidder.
Since the dockless bikes did not ask for permission of the city, they're now forbidden and the few I've seen were in a bad state.
That's a problem being solved already in Scandinavian countries. It just takes education and continually improving infrastructure. The more bikers that are on the road, the safer everyone feels riding a bike, which means more bikers on the road :)
The only thing that article says about snow is to prioritize clearing it on bike routes. That isn't good enough by a long shot. Sorry I'm not riding a bike when it's below freezing and I'm not riding a bike in the snow or the rain. Just forget it.
While the amount of bike traffic definitely goes down during winter, I can't recall a day in Chicago this last year where I didn't see anyone in the bike lanes
New york city, the chicago core (probably not greater chicagoland), SF, LA, Portland, Seattle proper would all be excellent candidates.
An e-bike can go 20 miles comfortably which means you could take it to work, lock it up and charge at work, and ride back in the evening for most commutes. I'd guess about 30 minutes is the upper bound average for most commuters that would ride a bike to work. Seattle and SF are perfect for pedal assist e-bikes because hills feel like flat roads, and their public transit system isn't nearly as good as NY
And maybe you haven't been to NYC in a while because although there is lots of mass mass transit, that does not make it non car-centric. It most certainly has a car traffic problem. Just because you don't have to own a car does not make a city non-car centric.
If you look at the inrix score care you will LA is number 1 for traffic and NYC is number 3.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I imagine the key is in how you build defensibility around the core ride-sharing business.
Ride-sharing suffers from the problem of clustered networks - you can be a global player like Uber and still lose the entire city of SF to a competitor like Lyft, or feel a minnow like Juno tear into your margins in NYC.
Having bike sharing in your pocket helps you build a wider moat around these clustered networks. If I typically take a bikeshare to the subway every morning, and rarely Uber on the weekend, Uber might win 10 low-margin trips from me during the week (bikeshare to and from the subway every day), and through the use of a loyalty program incentivize me to make my 2 high-margin weekend ridesharing trips Uber trips.
So yes, it is an adjacency, and it is lower margin than ridesharing and capital intensive, but this is a difficult market and at this point in the game it might make sense.
They just announced a $10M series A in January. To cash out at a $100M valuation doesn't seem like a bad outcome; after just doing just a series A, the founders' stake is likely to be in the 25-50% range (I'd guess in the lower end).
Obviously the zeitgeist is to shoot for a unicorn, but there are plenty of reasons to chose an earlier exit, only some of which suggest that the underlying business is shaky.
(Dodgeball sounds like a great deal BTW; rest & vest for a year or two, and then go start your company again except this time without having to bring in outside funding for your seed).
Yes and it's not like their 2nd iteration of Dodgeball (Foursquare) was that successful. They've pivoted to business analytics, but I doubt their investors are that happy.
This seems like a defensive play against google maps. The most likely future for Uber is to be a route option in Google maps or some other app, where the user chooses the app first, and the transport method first, and Uber will just be an option with a price tag and time beside it, alongside Lyft and waymo and whatever other services are operating.
Bringing other transport methods under the Uber umbrella seems like a play to keep you opening the Uber app when you want to go somewhere, rather than opening somebody else's app and selecting Uber.
I suspect it's really good signal for setting up or optimizing routes. Those bikes show very clear underserved endpoints that might otherwise be hard to discover. Might just be a cheap and interesting peek down-market on their geographic data-layer.
The quality of the signal seems to depend heavily on the quality of the bike service. If they aren't moving bikes to where there is demand, they aren't generating any information about where people want to go (because people aren't using the bikes).
It can also miss the forest for the trees if they have a few bikes that they usually put in an okay spot (but not enough bikes to meet the real demand).
One of my favorite purchases over the past few years has been a RadRover from Rad Power Bikes. ( https://www.radpowerbikes.com/products/radrover-electric-fat... for the curious.) It's still going strong a year and a half after I got it, and the motor covers all the sins of heavy tires and rolling resistance that a fatbike would otherwise bring to the table. My initial worries about range and getting stuck having to pedal a long way back home have fallen to the wayside- as long as I start with a fresh battery, it will outlast me. And as someone in their mid-40's, it is so nice to be able to feel free on a bike again, without having to worry about struggling up that one hill that blocks an otherwise lovely ride.
I don't mean to sound like an advertisement. I just want to note how transformative owning an ebike has been. A good 50% of my car trips have been replaced, and I enjoy the ride while doing so. And I like my car, too. But ebikes are just that much fun.
Hopefully Uber starts attempting to optimize routes again, if anything they have gotten worse. and every driver I have chatted with seems to agree, most just use Google maps and ignore the directions from Uber.
Huh. As a regular cyclist, I'm a bit suspicious. My view of the city is very different than a car's. And I'd think that Uber could buy bike data for way less than $100m.
These bikes are definitely going to eat into the number of uber rides. It's happened to me personally where I compare the time an Uber ride would take vs a bike and I end up choosing the bike. Interestingly this weekend I ended up choosing an electric scooter over a bike.These things are going to be used in a continuum depending on the situation, especially for younger people in urban environments.
I did the exact same thing. Those electric scooters are also a lot more fun than sitting in someone's Prius. Especially as the weather here in DC warms up, I can see myself shelling out the $2 fee for a bike/scooter way more often than I'd be willing to spend $8-10 for a Lyft.
It looks like a marketing play. There are studies proving that Uber is increasing traffic and pollution (not even talking about workspace issues and drivers explotation). Bikes are eco-friendly and everybody like them.
not entirely true concerning the bike share companies. when they are fighting for dominance like they are in Dallas, the city gets littered with the bikes and people start vandalizing them. This happened in Paris so much that the dockless bikeshares pulled out.
I think marketing play too - there has been so much negative press about Uber they badly needed an ecologically sound, 'no victims' vehicle to move people's minds away from the self driving car death of a bicycle pusher, and the Travis Kalanick era'Fight Club film extra' visuals a lot of people see as the Uber brand...
The relevant buzzword is multimodal transportation, i. e. the trend towards using a variety of different options either on a single route (bike to train) or depending on circumstances (bike when the weather is good, Uber otherwise).
Bike sharing is therefore complementary to "ride sharing" and having the two within one system could potential improve both.
The odds of their work surviving to the 10 year mark seems so small.
Are you sure that the odds are worse than surviving the 10 year mark without an acquisition? Would hardly be the first time someone sold because they simply couldn't make the growth math work, and they were all out of good options for financing.
They just took $10m in January, which is a fair bit of runway for testing hypotheses. When they start to run low on that, they can go to every single VC firm for more. Inside Uber, they are going to have approximately one executive to get funding from. Currently that executive obviously likes them. But feelings change, and they're just a reorg or an executive departure away from somebody who gives zero fucks.
Isn't this the same problem with a VC? The funds might like you now, but watch those ride numbers drop a bit and suddenly folks want ridiculous terms and you don't have many options. I would bet that getting $10m a year in the budget for a few years is no sweat at Uber...they had gross revenue of $37B in 2017. I realize they are trying to cut that, but increasing engagement in already profitable cities might have a material impact in the other direction.
Acqui-ad? Doing something bike-related is the "politician posing with a baby" of car companies.
If they combine accounts there will be true synergy though: many people either have zero rideshare accounts or almost all of them, the famous lack of moat. The same is probably true where multiple bikeshares are available. Those who have zero accounts in one "x-share" group and multiple in the other would be 100% locked to Uber when they occasionally do cross over from bikeshare to rideshare or vice versa.
You are 100% right with this being just a drop in the bucket though.
I know Uber initially formed a business partnership with JUMP a couple of months ago and I think they started analyzing the data and found a compelling reason (like user adoption, freq, stickiness, etc.) and found a business value to just own the platform.
Uber has become an expert in handling legal frameworks (in particular grey areas), politicians, and precarious workers. Bikes are exactly in their expertise area. Diversification is (IMHO) a good strategy to increase strength.
I suspect this move is about being the go-to transportation provider in any large city, regardless of the mode. Uber is seemingly good about paring back offerings that don't contribute to that vision, like UberRUSH
That's interesting. They only took money in January, though so it seems early (and expensive) for a mercy killing. Do you have more theory as to motivation?
> Why add the complexity when they could buy or build something later?
The two valuable things Uber has is customer credit cards on file and an app installed on their devices. Deals like this that add to those is valuable, and is a barrier to their current and future competitors.
If the goal is to jump in and steer the market away from affecting its other line of business then it may make sense... in a protective move that aligns with its car manufacturer partners as well.
It's a shame, Uber won't work on this nearly as hard as the founders did. Like you said founders delude themselves that buyers will help make their vision a reality. Even Facebook, seemingly the best, most hands off startup buyer, is now consuming WhatsApp and Instagram and moving out the original founders.
But...
From Uber's perspective, they have a lot of cash right now. They are worried about a self driving future where Waymo takes all the rides from them. Drivers are expensive (at least half the ride price), and electric assist bikes removes driver wages from the ride expense. And really what is Uber's big monopoly advantage? Just the 2 sided market, but it's local. With a 1000 drivers + advertising you could compete in a local market with them. Right now they are subsidizing a lot of their rides with the world's largest pool of capital, but eventually their capital will run down. If this is a good business they will get competition.
The shared bike business is capital intensive (buying bikes, building infrastructure) but that capital actually buys you some monopoly moat power. It's a really tough business for a startup to be in, but a pretty good fit for a big company. Uber could also do some cool things like a long haul Uber carpool to a bunch of Jump bikes just outside of downtown. Ie. shuttle up 101 to SF, Jump bike to get you through traffic.
For the Jump founder, they have been working on social bikes since 2010, the Uber deal probably includes a cash payout for some of their stock (often after a year). A reasonable guess is that the first 7 years of that were starvation times with a capital intensive business and low capital. At this point the founders might have 20 to 60 percent of the company, with half their stock paid for in cash they might get 10 to 30 million dollars in a year plus the same amount in Uber stock, which is pretty liquid. Plus whatever new grant in Uber stock they get for staying on (it would not be weird if this was another 5-10 million per executive over 5 years). And fundraising is just a massive pain.
From the Jump CEO's perspective:
Sell
$10-40 million / founder, almost certain payout
Never fundraise again
Lose company (everyone pretends, but that's what happened)
Still get to run company for a few years
Slowly watch your good culture be consumed by Uber's bad culture.
Compete
Compete with
- the 3 electric scooter startups that have launched in SF in last 2 weeks
- Uber and Lyft
- buses
- Go bikes
- self owned bikes and ebikes
- driving personal cars
2-7 years of hard work before cash, but then more money
Go before Board of Supervisors meetings to explain your plan for fishing bikes out of the bay
Keep company and autonomy
Make vision a reality
The world loses a lot when great startups like this don't compete, but it's understandable that founders sell.
Awesome! Having used Jump this weekend, I wouldn't say dockless is the main value prop to me as a customer - it's the power assist that makes it feel more like a scooter than a bike. Going medium distances (1-2 miles) and up and down steep hills in SF was a breeze. If you're commuting, it's "sweat free."
IMO Uber Pool/Lyft Line has gotten so slow (I'm sure Pool/Line's share of total rides vs regular X/Lyft is more than 80% in many cities now) for short to med distances that powered bikes has become more and more appealing.
it's the power assist that makes it feel more like a scooter than a bike
There are many comments online about how awesome electric bikes are and many skeptical responses. I think the basic divide comes down to one thing: Has the person tried an electric bike? Almost everyone who has immediately sees them as awesome. Many who haven't don't get the point.
There are finally some reputable electric bikes available for around $1,000 (https://www.propella.bike/products/singlespeed), but most people want transportation without having to deal with hassle on either end.
I've had a Juiced Cross Current (The newer better version is this: https://www.juicedbikes.com/products/crosscurrent-s) for over a year. I've put around 1k miles on it between commuting and doing long weekend bike adventures here in Los Angeles. I can't even begin to express how much I love my eBike. I peddle pretty hard with the assist so I get a good workout and 2x my effort. I agree - anyone who is skeptical simply hasn't tried one.
> Has the person tried an electric bike? Almost everyone who has immediately sees them as awesome. Many who haven't don't get the point.
Probably depends on your goals as well.
I got one of those 2-stroke engines to put on my bike a while ago and when it arrived I was looking at it and thinking "if I put this thing on my bike I'll never get any exercise". Instead I went to the pawn shop and got another bike and put it on that one instead -- and it sits in the corner unused to this day. One of these years I'll get it out and ride it around because it's actually pretty nice looking, a "lowrider" beach cruiser that fits the engine perfectly like they were made for each other.
I had a similar response. I bike to work, and one of my coworkers got an electric bike that he let me try. I was very tempted to get one, as it would make longer distance much more viable, but I was also afraid I'd always use the electric bike and not get any exercise.
I'd love something like Jump in Austin for trips when it's hot out, or longer distances.
I had an electric bike for a while. It worked well but it couldn't last my daily trip of 70KM so for a decent chunk of the time I was dragging along all the extra weight so I sold it and got a nice light road bike. If you are only going about 40km between charges it's perfect.
My first experience with an electric bike was pretty fun. I was at a stop light in front of a car and looked back to see a very angry look that I was on a bike...I cleared the intersection before they even entered it. It was a custom bike capable of 60mph
I've seen that removable battery style before in an ebike, and a friend that had a DIY version of that said vibration eventually caused heat problems that caused something to catch fire. Does this bike deal with that? Do you latch the battery to avoid vibration problems?
How is Express better than Pool? It's the same or slower. Same issues for me (waiting 5-10 minutes for pickup, then the unknown factor of whether there's 2 others already in the car or the driver will need to pick up 1-2 after you are picked up).
Just signed up for this in San Francisco -- Only to find that Russian Hill, Nob Hill, and North Beach are excluded. Plus Fort Mason, the Presidio, and anything west of the Panhandle.
"San Francisco" it is not. Which I guess is fine, but they make you pay up-front, so I found that a bit of cheek.
Admittedly it's only $2, but even on principle it's annoying. They should be much more transparent in the signup process. They even geolocate you, so they'd be aware you're out of their coverage zone.
I feel for them having to deal with SF regulations - so no beef there.
My main niggle is a UX one. They really need to communicate the coverage in the signup process (especially if you're outside it when you sign up).
To their supreme credit - I contacted support asking clarification. They got back to me with an answer in minutes. Plus they refunded my initial payment.
> looks like they've excluded areas with more tourists
If it's anything like NYC they did this to avoid upsetting the existing bike rental businesses in those areas. They need to do this to get local government buy-in of the program.
This is exactly the case. My understanding is that they've pitched themselves as a commuting solution to get approval, and the local tourist bike rental places complain as they get closer to the standard tourist biking areas of Golden Gate Park and the bridge.
We need to be aware of the problem that's happening in China with bike sharing [1]. There is a large saturation problem. Ofo seems to be one of the main contributors to the issue. In Seattle it seems like I see more and more Ofo bikes on the side of the road, and rarely do I see anyone riding them.
I wonder how much of such a bike can be recycled? I'd think it's close to 100% and that it probably pays for costs of pick-up. If not, cities could make companies pay for costs of disposing of bikes. Shouldn't be a big environmental issue then, just Chinese subsidies that help recycling companies and consumers. Pretty similar to all those VC billions that provided free Uber/Lyft rides to millions.
Does anyone know if going dockless increases ridership in any significant way? The consumer benefits seem great but it seems like such a nightmare to maintain compared to a docking system.
I can't speak to the complexity of managing a dockless system (and in particular, their profitability), but from a UX perspective, it's a total game-changer.
In my city, we started with docked, but after a dockless company arrived, literally no-one uses the docked bikes - why put up with the extra hassle of having to return the bikes for no user benefit?
The prices are already so low that I can't really see them being able to compete on price, so the only differentiating factor is ease of use, which dockless will always win on.
Also, in reply to a sibling comment, we have a pretty serious bike theft problem here, but they mostly don't bother with the dockless bikes except as a mode of transportation. Speculatively, perhaps most bike theft profits are in the gray market (i.e. Craigslist), where these highly-recognizable bikes can't be unloaded?
Returning the bikes to a dock is a benefit to everyone else in the city.
A dock is always placed in a location agreed by the council. It’s guaranteed to not be in anyone’s way or a safety hazard.
Maybe the dockless users in your city are more conscious. In mine, they will happily leave their rentals blocking the footpath. I constantly need to stop my child’s pram and move the bike out of the way.
Dockless bikes are an appropriation of public spaces by private companies and need to stop.
> Dockless bikes are an appropriation of public spaces by private companies and need to stop.
I'll support this, as soon as we reclaim the millions of square feet of private space appropriated by curbside parking. This would free up enough space for everyone, and their extended families to park their bikes.
If every block in my neighborhood has room for free parking for ~40 cars, then surely we could reclaim a few of those spots, for the sake of free parking for a greater number of dockless bikes.
> why put up with the extra hassle of having to return the bikes for no user benefit?
What about the extra hassle of finding and walking with your map to your dockless bike? (if you are lucky enough to find one close to you)
Also in both cities I lived, docking stations are everywhere, it has never been a problem (maybe once or twice a year when my usual docking station was full. Still, I just needed to go the next one, 5 min from there).
The system in Hamburg (StadtRAD) is an hybrid: you have to bring it to a dock, but if the dock's full, you can just lock the bike standalone near it.
Although, last time I mentioned it here someone said they've had problems with the position detection, such that they kept being charged despite leaving it near a dock.
You might have to hunt for one, but then you can leave it right at your destination so it should even out somewhat. That said, dockless bikes are everywhere in Seattle right now. Docked bikes never took off here, but I see people on the dockless ones all the time.
In Santa Monica they have the breeze docked bike share... which originally when it launched allowed you to leave the bikes anywhere for no charge (so best of both worlds).
I was an avid user and rode an average of four times a day!
A few months later, they started charging $2 if you didn’t lock a bike to the dock. This made for a pretty good a/b test of usage... I started using them only maybe once or twice a month!
I’d say dockless is about 50x better than docked.
And since bird showed up here (dockless e-scooters) I basically never use the breeze bike share anymore, despite having prepaid for a year of it.
I think the electricity probably makes it again 2x better and the scooter makes it again 2x better.
So overall, dockless e-scooters are maybe 200x better than docked bike shares!
Data point of one here, but docked bike share programs are a novelty for me, maybe useful on occasional weekends, but dockless makes it viable for replacing almost all use of public transit and ride sharing, including (especially) daily commute. Orders of magnitude difference in my personal usage.
Dockless gives gives you closer to end-to-end or "last mile" so much more than docked systems. With docked systems, you have to walk to both the pickup dock and find a drop off dock near your actual destination for a one way ride. So your "last mile" is very nearly always walking. They are limited to n(n-1)/2 routes where n is a docking station. With dockless, it's more like a car but without the hassle of finding a parking space, you can ride right up to your destination wherever that may be, and just get off the bike leaving it there. The only walking is to the nearest available bike at the outset of the trip. Data point of one here, I've visited cities with docked systems and commented on how cool it would be to use it, but I visited Seattle and actually used one of their dockless systems for several days during my stay, from short multi-block rides to a 14 mile round trip ride. It's tremendously useful for the shorter trips that are just too far for walking. The longer trip was for the heck of if it to see a little more of the city by bike with an errand to pick up a laptop charger needed that morning for my wife.
IME (Boston's Hubway), docked bikes are not reliable at rush hour. Even if there's a bike available at your point of departure, there's no guarantee of a slot available at the destination. I do use Hubways off-peak where it's much more reliable and I'm usually not on popular routes.
But generally, I'm riding my own bike and the days where I'm taking transit+bikeshare are rather low.
The only times I've used a bike share, it was because I was walking somewhere and happened to pass a dockless bike that seemed like a really good idea to just rent and use right away. These were invariable in places that would not have had a docking station.
I get that. But he mentioned that dockless made it feasible for replacing the commute. Those seem like the kinds of trips that dock based systems excel at because they are known routes.
The closest city bike docking stations are a ~10 minute walk from my apartment, and a ~5 minute walk from my office. There is always a dockless bike within a ~5 minute walk from my apartment, even during morning and evening rush hours, and I can leave it directly in front of my office door. The time spent on the bike is the same in both cases, about 10 or 12 minutes. So a docked bike commute is 25 minutes door-to-door, with a lot of time kind of "wasted", whereas a dockless bike commute is between 10 and 15, and all of the time spent feels like I'm making progress toward my goal.
It's worth noting that taking public transit (Muni bus) between these same two points takes at least 30 minutes (good day, light traffic, no mentally disturbed people interrupting the driver) and has taken as long as 55 minutes. A Lyft is also reliably slower, especially in the evening rush hour.
To be honest, the time taken is not such a huge deal. The bigger draw, by far, is that riding the electric bike is completely effortless, and usually quite fun. And it's also important that they are extremely handsome, I don't feel like a goober when I'm on them. Riding the city bikes, in comparison, is a completely different experience. You feel how big and heavy they are, you can easily work up a sweat, and they're not handsome machines, everyone looks a little bit like a doofus on them.
I do wonder how they keep track of those things, I see them all over the place -- in front of houses in neighborhoods, "hidden" in apartment complexes, locked to random things, left in the middle of the sidewalk so you have to push it out of the way to go by (my favorite), left unlocked in front of the corner store so anyone can jump on and ride away, &etc.
Rarely do I see anyone actually riding them though.
How so? We have dockless bikes here (the Chinese Mobike) but it seems like you never know where to pick them up. At less with the public bikes, I know where is the closest docking station to my house.
I actually like the consistency of knowing where the bikes will be without having to check an app. I have a dock less than a block from my apartment that is consistently stocked with bikes. It's convenient and less mental overhead than checking an app.
No, I meant you never know before looking at your phone if there is a dockless bike at less than 15 min from your home. And I have 2 public dock stations at 5 min from my home so...
Where is here? In London, you can see them in the app. They allow you to "block" it for 15 minutes so it's less of a gamble if you have to walk a few minutes for the next bike. Works well from my first tests and cheaper/easier than the official version.
Yes, because docked bikes need to be done in cooperation with a city or business to install a dock station. With dockerless, the streets where I live have just been littered with bikes and scooters.
And you get NIMBYism. In London, some neighbourhoods are excluded from bike-sharing because communities didn't want to have docking stations in their streets (takes away parking space and can create noise).
Another data point of one, but when I was in Arizona in March, I tried Ofo bikes. The fact that I could ride to exactly where I wanted to go without having to find a dock was the only reason I thought it was viable. I rode to an açaí restaurant, "docked my bike" then rode the bike to work. My office was no where near where the company would have put a dock so I would say that dockless was an extremely value feature.
As far as Ofo picking up the bikes on their end... that's probably a nightmare. That being said, there is a Data Skeptic - Bike Share Rebalancing[1] episode so I'm sure there are data scientists optimizing the pickup and distribution algorithm to make deckles cheaper or as cheap as docked bikes.
> I rode to an açaí restaurant, "docked my bike" then rode the bike to work.
Sounds nice, but what do you do when someone else takes the bike while you’re eating? Whe I hear ‘dockless’ I think about the hassle of finding a bike where I want it, not the convenience of not having to drop it off...
To be honest, there were about 10 bikes within 400 feet of where I was. There just wasn't one exactly at the restaurant. I would have had to walk probably 2-5 mins to get another bike. That 2-5 mins is probably still better than where a dock would have been. It's really weird being out there because it seems like there are bikes everywhere in Tempe.
I think the additional overhead versus a docked system isn't as big as you think. The popular dock-based DC BikeShare requires a whole fleet of vans picking up bikes from completely full docks and redistributing them elsewhere.
They finally set up a system where there's an employee waiting by a popular downtown bike rack to manually check in your bike because the rack would otherwise be full with a line of other people waiting for an open slot.
Anecdotally, Seattle had a docked bike-share a few years a go that shut down a short while later because no one used it, and recently launched a dockless bikeshare that I've been using a lot. From a customer perspective, it's a night-and-day difference in usability.
Another data point here in SF. Up until last year I had zero bike share racks installed around my apartment, and as of this year, there are still zero in >80% of the areas that I actually go to in the City (mostly in the West).
As of about a month or two ago, I have seen these Jump bikes pop up around the streets I frequent, even seeing a row of 4 of them at some point parked in a bookstore's bike rack parklet as if it were a dock made for them. I was considering trying out Jump up until this announcement, but I essentially can't use Bay Area Bike Share because there aren't any docks at any point in the city where I would ride to.
Just the other day I saw some very dubious people on BART with dockless bikes. I had to wonder if there's a good secondary market in bike parts that makes those things worth stealing.
i work near a group of homeless bike chop shop people with trash bins filled with parts. they move alot* of bikes.
i dont see any of the ford or jump bikes around. i think they are just so awash in parts and frames, there really isn't any strong pull to try to mine the bike rental stream. the frames in particular are probably worthless except as steel scrap.
With regards to the Ford bikes, that's actually by design. The Ford bikes are basically the same as Montreal's Bixi, which uses custom parts; this means that since the parts only fit the Ford bikes, there's no reason to chop them for parts, as they won't fit on a regular bike. They also require custom tools to work on them, making it less likely that they'll be chopped up for parts in the first place.
They're all custom made. Maybe selling scrap-metal could be worth it but if the GPS track of a lot of bikes ends at certain addresses, they'll probably start investigating.
My usual profile for those bikes is tourists and young professionals. These were grizzled, grubby older men. Plus, the theory of these bikes is as last-mile transportation; I've never seen them on BART before or since.
I tried dockless bikes in Taiwan and while being able to park anywhere is grrat initally, the chance your bike gets taken, the difficulty in locating a bike due to bariable locatioms and inaccurate GPS, really dirty bikes, are all huge problems.
I actually did find bikes like that in the wild. Luckily there were usually a group of bikes there. I'd imagine it's probably against their TOS to lock their bikes.
I live in the biggest dockless bike market currently and its an eyesore. Our corrupt government has decided not to even think about making legislation about the companies until September.
People are getting very sick of seeing them laying all around and its starting to go the way of Paris, whose people rose up against the bike share companies and got them to pull out through sheer vandalism.
Someone cut one in half and mounted it on a telephone pole the other day
Jump's value prop is not so much being dockless but being an electric bike. You can't leave Jump bikes anywhere like other dockless bike companies (smart move on their part...I'm sure each bike is at least $1000) i.e. you actually have to lock/unlock the bike from a bike rack to use and if you don't properly lock the bike after use you're liable as a customer if it's stolen. It's an important difference IMO and means that you don't see these laying around everywhere.
Unfortunately there's an ordinance in my city saying you can't use an ebike without a helmet or something so the bike shares here aren't touching ebikes yet.
> the way of Paris, whose people rose up against the bike share companies and got them to pull out through sheer vandalism.
I think you're confusing the cause for the vandalism, it is much more "casual", the bikes are vandalised because they are there and the companies stupidly provided fragile bikes. Also the opposition from the city council did not help.
I'm not confusing anything. I can point you to many social media posts urging people to vandalize them because they are annoyed at the bike share. The bikes being absolutely littered everywhere does create a lot of opportunistic vandals, but there FOR SURE is a concerted effort to fuck over the companies.
I did not see any of these, but maybe it's because of my near-zero use of social media. So I'll take your word for it, that some of the bike degradations were caused to fuck the companies.
I stopped road riding several years ago. It's just gotten too dangerous in my opinion - probably due to smartphones. Unlike many European cities, ours are and will likely remain geared towards cars only. That isn't going to change in my lifetime. But if I'm wrong, and there are some US cities rebuilding their roads to separate bikes and cards, please do let me know which ones.
I think these bikes miss the mark on two major fronts:
- Why do they need to be electric? Bicycles are phenomenally efficient, even for people who aren't in "good shape." In SF you can find routes around the really crazy hills. Furthermore, electric bikes reduce the barrier to entry for douches to "go cruising". Every day (NYC) I almost get hit by one of these things buzzing around. I'm sure these bikes are less powerful, but come on, exercise!
- Dockless. There is plenty of room for docks, USE THE ROADS. This video does a great job showing how inefficient cars are with space: https://vimeo.com/223171024. It's not right for a company to co-opt public space with their bikes. These should be designed into cities. It's not hard; make space.
It's much harder to bike in SF without an electric assist. I biked for 2 years in Seattle with no problems, moved to NYC and enjoyed the occasional trip over the Williamsburg bridge. Now in SF and I've only tried to bike once. It was fun bombing the hill outside but I immediately hit another hill and another.. I've essentially given up on riding here.
I use Jump regularly to run errands when I'm downtown and it's much easier to pickup/drop off bikes than it would be worrying about my own expensive bike getting stolen. These aren't quite dockless as they have to locked up properly and are tracked by the app/gps.
Where I live in SF, it's pretty hard to avoid the hills if I want to ride back to my apartment from downtown, even if I ride the Wiggle. Unless I take a rather circuitous route, there just isn't a way to get around having to go up more than 250 feet. I get the exercising bit, but I already get quite a bit of a workout on one of the Jump bikes.
The dockless bit has been a very big draw for me because the Ford bikes do not have docks out in my neighborhood and do not plan to in the near future. My neighborhood is also somewhat NIMBY: the local merchants association has been very opposed to the BRT project that is going to happen on the main street through the neighborhood because they claim that the decrease in car parking spaces and traffic will cause them to lose business. I wouldn't be surprised if they would resist bike docks as well. For now, dockless is a good short-term solution.
- fan out / fan in. in the morning commute centers (bart, caltrain) will have X bikes in the dock and many times that riders that want a bike. in the evening commute centers will have X dock spots, but many times that riders trying to drop off a bike
- building docks is extremely expensive and time consuming. they should be designed into cities? sure, i agree. but you are talking about doing a public construction project that has to get approved by a planning committee, funded, scheduled, passed all kinds of environment and safety checks, and then a few years and $3,000,000 later a 10-space dock appears on some streets. having the space for docks is not the problem
I'm currently sitting in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. One of the first things you notice when you get here is that there are not bike lanes, not bike paths but very seriously bike roads on either side of the street. These are filled pretty much all the time by people of all ages on their personal bikes. There are no rental bikes anywhere. The moral of this story is that if you want people to bike, build bikeable cities, don't fill sprawled out and hazard filled cities with functionally useless rental bikes.
I'm an avid biker, and I also make heavy use of my city's shared bike program. I go more miles on my own bikes, but I ride shared bikes more often.
I think you're overlooking many significant use cases for shared bikes. Here's a few:
- It's well below freezing out and you just want to quickly get from your apartment to the train station, drop the bike off and forget about it.
- You won't be returning to that station to pick the bike back up later.
- Bike to the grocery store. Walk back carrying several big bags.
- Take the train into work in the morning, bike back when you have more time or energy.
- Getting from one point to another where a cab would be overkill but walking take too long.
- You want to bike to places, but don't want to deal with lugging your bike up 5 flights of stairs several times a day or don't have room to store it if you do.
The summary is that shared bikes let you ride in situations which you normally wouldn't. (And of course for many casual riders it can easily be their only bike.)
Yea I’ll admit I’m skeptical of dockless bikes as well. We have docks and since there’s basically always one within half a mile or (usually much) less, it works perfectly fine imo.
Maybe dockless would be nice on a beach with a boardwalk, but in a city? Where are they going to go? And I have a hard time imagining anywhere with a typical not NYC or main downtown area population density will keep them moving enough. I’m happy to be proven wrong though.
Fair enough, but the difference between a biker and non-biker is not access to a bike. The difference is that one thinks it's too physically difficult and/or dangerous and the other doesn't. Thats a problem of environment, not access.
>the difference between a biker and non-biker is not access to a bike //
Can't get planning permission for a shed in your front garden to put a bike in so if you're in a standard UK terrace you have to carry a bike through your house or keep it inside. This makes storage an utter pig and daily use is practically ruled out unless you want a house full of dirty drips and wheel marks. Richer friends have semis, so have side access or driveways.
Servicing needs tools, not too many but a few, and skill (not a problem for me). Cost is a couple £hundred for a decent bike, I can't find any second hand that appear to be working for less than £50 in my area, I think the bike thieves actually inflate prices. Those bikes are barely usable IME. £80 for a 2nd hand bike, or £100-120 for a really crappy new bike.
I love biking, can't afford the bus, but also can't really afford to keep a decent bike. With access I'd ride 3 days out of 7 as a minimum.
I used to live in a town that was much more bikeable, and easier to own a bike in (more space in my house to store it). I was a super-regular bike commuter, but now I just want it sometimes when something is over 2 miles away but less than 10. I think this is pretty common for a lot of people living in cities, and bike shares are a godsend.
Another thing not mentioned is how nice it is for people who are from out of town, either as tourists or nomads or in for work. I lived/worked in Taipei for a month, and bike share is part of the government transit program, first 30 minutes free, and you can access it with your subway transit card. This singlehandedly made me love the city.
I had actually forgotten I still own a personal bike until writing this reply.
Well part of a problem with biking is that you need a place to secure a bicycle. Many places in America do not have this; not everyone is carrying a lock and often there's nothing to lock to. No one wants to ride a mode of transportation that is impossible to secure and is going to get stolen by the time they need to make the return trip. Bike share is good in that it removes that particular obstacle.
I am in the city of Sydney, where no less than 4 dockless bike rental companies started operating overnight.
They have become urban clutter. Users park them in locations where they’re easily knocked over and, from there, they usually get damaged.
There’s also a very high incidence of vandalism. Bikes with no seats, no pedals, bent wheels, on top of trees, in canals.
It’s common to see heaps of scrap bikes on the road. These companies not only are using public land to offer their services but also polluting my city.
All this has made me a vocal opposer of dockless rentals. Work with city council to put your bikes on a dock or don’t come here.
You have to lock Jump bikes to bike racks after use and are liable if you do not and it gets stolen, so it's "semi-dockless" in that sense and unlike other bike sharing companies.
The dockless jump bikes seemed to be locked to something. I think it's a requirement for riders to lock them after use, and so far, they haven't been cluttering SF.
Maybe that is the compromise. No docks, but have to be locked to some sort of normal bike rack to prevent clutter. The manufacturer / city isn't responsible for maintaining expensive dock infrastructure where company A cant use company B's docks, and apartments & businesses can create bike parking space in an adhoc manner, making the over all market more efficient.
Bike shares are great even if you have a great bicycling city. I myself am a Very Serious Cyclists, more than 200 miles per week, and I still use the bike share at least weekly. Just today I had to take my car to the shop, then I took a train to another place and there was a Lime Bike so I jumped on that and went to my destination. I have no idea why people complain about bike shares, dockless or docked.
I don’t know what you’re trying to show me with that first link. It’s two scooters parked in a street parking spot that would normally be occupied by only one car. To me that’s a huge victory for urban America over the automobile.
That’s a link to hundreds of images... that being said, which parking spot? The pictures I see are knocked over bikes thrown about like a child's poorly kept toys.
Contrary to what you may believe, you’re not allowed to leave a car wherever you feel like it at a given moment.
You can’t even leave your own person sprawled out on whatever public surface pleases you.
They get piled up against buildings. They exacerbate the problem that many US roads have no place for cyclists, and alternatively, cyclists incorrectly will use sidewalks. All said, in the current state, more cycling is creating a bigger problem and not solving the hard ones.
Cycling is awesome. Let's fix how they coexist on roads.
Literally nobody has ever been killed by a shared bike ridden improperly upon a sidewalk. Meanwhile people are killed every day by cars on sidewalks, and we're all headed for extinction from climate change caused by cars no matter how operated. Don't tell me I am supposed to care about the infinitesimal imaginary harm of someone who chooses a bicycle, especially if that person would have normally chosen a car.
This is illegal, and uncommon. Maybe you live in a rundown area with a poor rule of law, but the norm is a car in the road gets towed and it’s owner pays.
Are the share bikes getting “towed” and their owners billed?
Just to add a little bit to this: I also live in NL and the cycling infrastructure is not limited to central locations; there are well maintained, separated, safe cycling roads between cities as well. It helps that it's a small country, but even fairly long distances like Rotterdam -> Den Haag (~25km/15miles) is easily done without ever mixing with vehicle traffic.
Exactly. And as a pedestrian, I expect to be having arguments with the people renting these bikes (I already have had a few, and they're still new in my city). They seem to think they can ride on the sidewalk, even though the street I've had the argument has a separate bike lane.
Is the bike lane physically protected from the car lanes? If not, it's quite dangerous to ride in it, no matter what the law says.
Edit: I should add, please don't buy into the idea that people walking and bicycling should fight over the scraps of space left over after nearly everything is given to cars.
Actually, in the 70s Netherlands was very much a car-first country. The current cycling infrastructure is a very hard won victory, with thousands dead along the way [1].
There used to be no sidewalks. Streets were for people and the occasional horse. Then Henry Ford started making cars. Let's all be glad that we didn't decide to just let pedestrians be mowed down by cars because hey man it's just too hard to start over
It'd be nice if they can expand their subscription plan to more than low-income users. Kind of sucks to pay $3 per ride no matter how often you use it.
I've seen these types of bikes around from time to time (in London), but certainly not enough to consider them a reliable form of daily transport. Whereas the station near my work, and near home, always has a healthy supply of docked Boris bikes waiting for me.
Riding your bike to work was one of the only things that is the same in San Francisco no matter what socioeconomic class you're a part of. Jump changed that. Disappointing.
Everyone riding a bike used to deal with the same problems. Unfortunate as those problems are they could happen to a rich person, a poor person, or anyone in between which is an equitable sharing of the social cost. The privileged people used to be able to easily spend more money to replace a stolen bike which is the problem Jump solves for the people that can afford it. That's now a bigger burden on the people who can't afford Jump and are less likely to afford replacing a stolen bike at all.
Personal e-bikes for $1000-2000 (same experience as Jump) can easily be under $.25 per ride. I have 1000+ rides and 4500 miles on my $1800 ebike in under a year and I could sell it for $1400.
Yeah but if it gets stolen you're out $2000 and since you said Jump benefits the not-poor, I assumed you meant "People who can't shell out $2000 on a bike".
I also use a Boosted Board because I break even wrt Uber every 3 months or so. But if I didn't have $1600 to spend on that purchase, then all the future savings in the world wouldn't mean shit.
"Yet in recent months, Dallas has become ground zero for a nascent national bike-share war, as five startups armed with hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars have blanketed the city with at least 18,000 bikes." -- https://archive.is/kczBY
It sounds like boom times for Dallas scrap dealers. No one who has ever been to Dallas could ever think this makes sense: Dallas and Fort Worth are about 80 km in diameter, and unpleasantly hot and humid for about half the year. No one wants to rent electric pseudo-scooters there.
It's true there's an extremely strong car culture in Dallas (and the rest of Texas) for reasons of weather and geography. But the bike shares in Dallas are concentrated in the denser areas full of boutiques, restaurants, museums, etc. The idea is not to replace cars so much as allowing you to park once and then get around on the bike.
The issue that's immediately apparent to anyone who actually goes there is that the sidewalks are littered with dozens of bikes, most of which have tipped over. The docks at least force you to keep the bikes somewhat organized and out of the way.
I can't figure out why e-bikes are considered bicycles and not mopeds or motorcycles. How does this not require a drivers license, with or without a motorcycle endorsement? Is the output limited (like the 50cc moped)?
Why are motorized vehicles allowed on bike lanes just because they have electric motors instead of gas?
I'm also totally blown away by Seattle's disregard for helmet laws to enrich some venture capitalists. We didn't even bother repealing the helmet law, we just don't enforce it.
Re: the helmet laws, they've been shown to do more harm than good[1]. Helmet laws suppress ridership, and riders tend to be safer when they're surrounded by more bicyclists. This is why cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen are actually safer for riders despite having no helmet laws.
Yeah I'm with you on the helmet laws. I'm not ok with the selective enforcement. If they cause more harm than good we should repeal the law.
When I took the MSF class there was talk of repealing the motorcycle helmet law for similar reasons. Not sure how I feel about that. It apparently came with an automatic DNR provision if you crash without a helmet.
There are potential religious conflicts there so I assume it would defer to whatever the drivers license says. Not really sure. It seems strange to me that we will just let people die because of the way they injured themselves, seems arbitrary.
They're basically regular bikes, but with an electric motor that helps you with pedaling. Unlike a moped or motorcycle, you still need to pedal an e-bike to get it moving.
The Jump bikes in SF use 250W motors, which, when going uphill, is similar to having an extra person helping you pedal.
People should be a little more careful on these because these bikes can go pretty fast. That said, from my own experience using Jump bikes in SF, people on road bikes still zoom by me regularly on streets.
Yeah I get that but where is the line? Can I put a 10hp electric motor on a bicycle and ride it through a park? If so why can't I do that with a small gas motor? Are there actual regulations on this? If they go fast enough that people "need to be careful" where is the line where we ask them to prove they can be careful?
In Seattle you have to wear seatbelts in cars and helmets on motorcycles and bicycles. In the case of bike shares and e-bikes we seem to just ignore those rules. If we can ignore them in one case why not ignore them in all cases?
It strikes me as a double standard that benefits venture capitalists more than the public.
CPSC rules stipulate that low speed electric bicycles are exempt from classification as motor vehicles providing they have fully operable pedals, an electric motor of less than 750W (1 hp), and a top motor-powered speed of less than 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) when operated by a rider weighing 170 pounds
No, you can't. The bike has to be "electric pedal assist" to be street legal. That means it requires more attention and physical effort from the rider than a throttled vehicle. The engines aren't very powerful and the speeds are capped at 20 mph or below.
You're right that Seattle should've taken the time to actually repeal the helmet law. Your comparison of riding helmetless while cycling compared to a motor cycle is a bit much though don't you think? Seat belt laws have much stronger evidence in their favor. Helmet laws are not a panacea for cycling safety and could actually be harmful to both cyclists and to the general population.
I’m not anti-VC but if you have followed the development of bike share in Seattle it seems to be more about making businesses work than about making transit work. My problem also has to do with the selective enforcement of the helmet law to enrich investors.
I don’t mind if investors make money. I mind when they circumvent our laws and endanger the public to do so.
I also admit to some ignorance about e-bikes which has now been cleared up by you and sibling commenters.
My comparison to motorcycle helmet laws and seat belt laws was just to reinforce that if we are going to selectively enforce the bicycle helmet law we should just repeal it because it’s clearly not as important as motorcycle helmets or car seat belts.
Indeed. Bike share schemes don't need to be publicly funded if run properly. Citi Bike has been a huge success in NYC without taking a dime from taxpayers. Perhaps an ebike system would have been more economically viable in a hilly city like Seattle.
They are usually capped to 250W and 25KM/h. Anyone half fit could blast past 4x as fast on a regular bike than on an ebike. The benifit of an ebike is you get to your destination with minimal sweat and get about as much exercise as walking.
The army figured this out in ww2 to extract soldiers and others. Using a harness and pole attached to the rider, and catch cable attached to a plane, the rider is plucked at speed into the air. Much like the old air-mail systems. There are youtube videos of it.
Dockless bicycles in Melbourne are being thrown into the river at an alarming rate, because people are sick of companies relying on littering in public as a business model.
Share bikes have a huge potential for the environment and overall, commute efficiency. While there may be bad parts to start, I think there's plenty of great parts to come.
Self-driving bikes probably have a lower fatality rate than cars. Maybe this gives them some breathing room to improve their AI under-the-radar, so to speak.
I especially can't figure out why the Jump CEO would do it. The odds of their work surviving to the 10 year mark seems so small. It reminds me of something like Dodgeball. (For those who don't remember, it was a company basically like Foursquare, but years before. Google bought it and did little with it. Eventually the founders got tired of it, left Google, and started the same company again.)