The larger bike share system is called B-CYCLE I think. It has a share system that covers quite a few cities across the Nation.
High population density areas work best for the bike sharing system. Even a FREE system will not work if the stations are too far away from the places one needs to go to ( like WORK and HOME ).

HOME to BART: 2 STATIONS
BART to WORK: 2 STATIONS

A high population density makes that bike sharing system work. Even just ONE of the trips makes this system work as long as a mass-transit system rents BICYCLE LOCKERS for a reasonable fee.

Another thought: rent E-BIKES using the same systems. That takes care of the climbing SFBA hills and some distance problems. Just set the max speed to a smaller number for high density pedestrian areas.

One example: a regular bike outfitted with a Magic Pie ( a corny name for a very good product ) from Golden Motors. You keep the chain and pedals as a backup. Golden Motors even has a swappable battery pack for those long work commutes.

Just a few ideas to get people thinking outside the box for a Santa Clara County type bike-share system that could work.

protective gear, just like motorcyclist. Spills can be very bad.

Gee. Last story I read about bike share talked about its glowing success. But now I read that it's "not proven to be particularly popular" here.
Can't WAIT to read about the glowing success of BRT.

Steve, I don't think there's any contradiction. The bike share was a glowing success in San Francisco and unsuccessful in Mountain View. I don't know about you, but that's exactly what I expected to happen when they first started talking about this three years ago.

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Are there really a lot of people taking public transit or cars to get to downtown Mountain View and then wanting to bike around town?

I would think there are more people who live nearby and want to bike the whole way, on their own bikes. I'm one of them. All I really want is some decent bicycle parking downtown so I can stop at a restaurant. There's almost nothing. That's why I just signed this petition: Web Link Installing some highly-visible bike racks and publicizing them would be a lot cheaper than this new program.
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I don't understand why they've piloting it with so few bikes over such a wide area. It sounds practical only for biking from one station to another one, and best when you know there will be a bike waiting for you to return later. So why not concentrate all of the stations in San Francisco, with plenty of bikes per station? Then once that proves to be a success, expand. I think they've made a dumb move, but I hope the program is successful anyway.
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Biker share here was exactly the failure I predicted. And just HOW MUCH of our tax money did the MTC flush down the toilet in this pursuit? I'd imagine they could have purchased a bicycle for every Mountain View resident for less.

Steve: according to the first article I linked, it was a "$4.3 million Metropolitan Transportation Commission grant administered by the Valley Transportation Authority" (which I think means California taxpayer money in general rather than Mountain View taxpayer money in particular).

A bit frustrating to see that money have predictably little effect, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the taxpayer money we spend on cars routinely (sometimes to equally little effect). A single traffic light costs $500,000. (Web Link How many traffic lights do you think are in Mountain View? Then there's the cost of repairing roads after cars have driven on them, an expense that just doesn't exist with bicycles. Road damage is proportional to the cube of the axle weight of the vehicle, so bicycles cause essentially no damage at all in comparison to cars and trucks.