I'm curious - do any Mountain View or Palo Alto residents actually use Bike Share? In New York City, there are stations spread around the neighborhoods to encourage residents to use them. In Mountain View, the stations are mostly around the train stations and business district, which maybe makes sense for visitors, but is terrible for residents who have to walk long distances to get to the nearest station. Palo Alto's station locations are even worse. Will we ever get enough new stations to make this a workable transportation alternative for Mountain View or Palo Alto residents?

Bikes certainly have become the best and fastest option for my quick in-town trips. I can roll right up to the front door with no parking hassles or waiting for traffic at red lights or stop signs. And since someone will ask, yes, I'm religious about stopping at lights and stop signs, but its nice when you don't have to wait for anyone in front of you.

Based on the data, the program for Mtn View has been a failure.

@Bicycle owner: Links with actual data, or you're lying.

The data can be downloaded from the following url. However you will need to understand basic stats.

Web Link

The program has been a success in San Francisco, not so much in other places. SF has the density and most of the stations, so that is not a surprise.

The bureaucrats are planning to eliminate the use of personal transportation vehicles in parts of the Bay Area - including on El Camino. Naturaaly, the rich and powerful will be given special exemptions.

Until you can define how "Success" of the program was specified, you cannot proclaim failure. A basic understanding of stats won't help if you have no definition of what "Success" would be, as it was originally laid out by the program.

The Mis marketing is the cost of $9 a day for a membership and allows you to ride the bike for 30 min. I guess you can use it multiple times each day but must park it back in a rack. But many see $9 a day a keep it out all day and get the over time charge of $4 1 hour then another $14 for each hour after that that's a $335 mistake if you keep it out all day.

OK I understand it is meant to be a commuter bike and ~1 hour SB the max $13. But be aware a $100 deposit is also taken out of your card.


Mtn View 7000 Palo Alto 3000 SF 250,000

Maybe that's why the low use numbers 7000 = 19 users a day. Figure 9 stations that's 2 bikes moved each station.

Would it be a better public investment to build more bike parking (especially overnight options) and paint and signs for bike paths than these $3,000-6,000 shared bikes?

Cost of Bike Share Per Bike: Web Link
Cost of the Bay Area Program:
Web Link

This just seems it is useful for occasional commuting (specifically transfers to public transportation) or tourism.

If you want to use it for more than 1/2 hour, you are charged rental fees. $4 for an extra 1/2 hour. Need more than 1/2 hour every weekday, then that translates to another $100/month. (on top of the $88/year). The scary part is what happens if you need to stop somewhere along the way and someone steals the bike? You are out $1200! So, after a year, you would owe $1200 in rental fees + $88 in a membership fee and another $1200 because some yahoo stole the bike while you stopped to grab a coffee. $2488 Wouldn't it be smarter to go buy a cheap bike? Craiglist has them for $50 or there are some pretty nice entry-level bikes for a couple hundred.

Bike share programs are effective in cities that are absolutely a disaster to drive in. Otherwise, they do give people a chance to try out biking and for those people who don't want to bike, but use public transportation, could use them to facilitate a transfer. The other benefit is they introduce people to bike sharing so when they see the service in *real cities*, they will be more comfortable to use them.

Bike Share is only useful if there are enough stations around town so that you can always find a station near your destination to check it in immediately with no overage charges and no worries about locking on your own. The problem with the existing system is that there are far too few stations to make the system practical. Hopefully, this is just a pilot right now and they will be expanding to a practical level sometime soon.

Now this would be great if they were on the school campuses and at the end of my street. No more worrying about bikes getting damaged or stolen while at school.

Absurd cost per unit
Ridiculously low ridership
Zero chance for self sufficiency
FAIL, FAIL, FAIL.
But of course, if we define it properly, we can still call it a success.