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So many people are excited about Hubway - even lawyers
By adamg on Tue, 03/06/2012 - 7:12am
Of course, where some people see an exciting way for Boston to cycle into the 21st century, lawyers see the potential for new business:
Boston's Hubway bike-share system will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the number of cyclists sharing the road with automobiles. Unfortunately, this increase in the volume of cyclists on the road will likely also lead to an increase of bicycle accidents in the City of Boston.
If you or a loved one has been injured in a bike accident, please contact the law firm of Altman & Altman, LLP to schedule a Free Initial Consultation with one of our skillful Greater Boston bike accident lawyers. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In addition to being available around the clock, all emails sent to the law firm of Altman & Altman receive an immediate response.
H/t Adam Castiglioni.
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Comments
Actually
Accident lawyers may be salivating, but studies actually show that as the number of bikers on the road go up, the number of accidents stays stable or drops, resulting in a lower frequency of accidents per mile travelled.
This has been the experience of bike share programs in Paris and in DC.
And if anyone is actually interested in bike law they should check out BikesafeBoston.com run by a lawyer who actually bicycles for transportation.
Good Point
Consider as well that Boston has improved its cycling facilities in the downtown area - new bike lanes along the greenway being very much appreciated (if not properly policed for taxicabs and box trucks).
Is it just my observations in the Financial District, or is hubway much more used by people who work and live around here than tourists?
According to Czarina Freedman...
...40% of Hubway riders are from out of town, and 70% of Hubway's income comes from tourists. She talked in circles about it at the Bike update event last week. Regardless of the fact that I work for a (sort of) competing company, I find that absurd - the system is NOT designed for tourists, at ALL.
...semi related, I've been seeing more and more box trucks parking outside of the bike lane, or at least leaving a good amount of room. Woo!
What I find interesting ...
During bike to work week, commuters were encouraged to submit routes they commuted using Google Maps. I quickly noted that the interface permitted placing notes along tagged segments, so I added in things like hazardous routes, problems with pavement, and areas that were poorly designed for biking or could use some enforcement. I then encouraged friends, via facebook, to contribute similar annotated routes.
Since then, I've seen a fair bit of improvement - most notably, the lanes on the Greenway that say "bikes DO belong here!" if nothing else.
Tourists seem to get
Tourists seem to get befuddled by the credit card interface.
Hubway really should make it easy for hotels to issue 1 day passes for their guests.
No.
Hotels should (and do, generally) send them to Urban AdvenTours, Community Bikes, Cambridge bikes, etc, i.e. local businesses that offer an actual face-to-face bike rental experience, and can instruct them in how to safely and properly ride in Boston's streets, as well as provide them with helmets. No tourist is going to buy a helmet for their short stay in Boston.
Hotels sending tourists to Hubway for bike rentals will only continue to take business away from companies like the one I work at, and cause further confusion and dissatisfaction with the misleading pricing on the kiosks. I can't even count the number of times tourists told me last summer "This is a scam/bait and switch/hard to understand" or more commonly "I wish I'd believed you guys about Hubway's pricing."
Tourists
I don't know if they are tourists, or just local idiots. Despite the part of the agreement that says you will where a helmet, it is rare to see someone wearing a helmet.
And I am with you on the trouble people have with the pricing. I know I saw at least one rider on a Hubway bike on the Hub on Wheels event who looked like he might not have the $80 or whatever it costs to have a bike for more then half a day.
Yes.
Some tourists go on a bike vacation because they want to visit a certain city and a bike is a good way to get around there.
Some tourists go on a bike vacation because they want to visit a certain city and they love biking.
The latter are your customers.
The former are not. Hubway is a better fit for them.
In a perfect world, sure.
I could quote some pretty depressing/shocking numbers from July vs August 2010 vs 2011, but I don't know them off the top of my head. The fact of the matter is (which is irrelevant to this article in the first place) that Hubway (and Alta Bike Share in general) has some issues in its marketing department in that they can't seem to put out an ad that accurately portrays the pricing. Indeed, it's hard to do without being excessively wordy; but when you consider that the company (Alta) has been accused of false advertising and bait-and-switch schemes in other places.
You work at a Bike rental company?
Can you explain why they're so expensive around here?!
I rented a bike: $70 for a month, in California. With helmet and lock. Here you'd pay that for 2 days, for basically the same bike.
Do you work at a German editing company?
:-)
Nein
Was meinen Sie?
I would consider $70/month a steal
Even for a simple beach cruiser, ~$2/day is a good deal. I'm guessig there's more competition in CA? There are so few bike rental places here, they can set whatever price they wish.
Indeedy.
In CA, it's huge business - bike rental shops are a dime a dozen out there apparently. Just google "San Francisco Bike Rental." I'd imagine price wars are pretty common.
Also, you can get a cheap bike over here too - MyBikeOnline for example (based out of South Boston, iirc) rents bikes for a similar monthly price. However, the bikes they rent out are cheaper and shittier than Wal-Mart bikes. It's the epitome of "you get what you pay for." Sure, you can rent a beach cruiser for 70 bucks a month - but keep in mind that the retail price of the bike is probably around $300, or possibly even less.
The bikes that Urban Adventours (my workplace) and Cambridge bikes rent out cost about 350-450 for us to purchase in the first place, and cost a fair bit of money each month in parts and labor to keep rolling.
Ambulance Chasers, LLP
I got probably fifty letters from these guys in the six months after I got hit by a car three years ago. Come to think of it, I wonder if some poor soul at BU is still getting letters from them, since the only reason I stopped getting them is because I moved.
Not to degrade them, though - they were a client of the messenger company I worked for, and their employees were always pleasant and seemed professional enough. I just wish they'd laid off on the letters when I didn't answer for the tenth time.
Bike-Sharing Is Safer Than Riding Your Own Bike
http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/06/16/from-london-...
Probably has something to do
Probably has something to do with the bikeshare bikes having active lighting on them and having routine maintenance. Being visible because of the lighting and having properly working brakes make a big difference.
Not the only reason
As a Zipcar user, I found myself being much more gentle to the car because I sometimes ran into the other people who were using the car before or after me. I also had to report the ways I sometimes found the car from a careless user before me. I never wanted to be someone that someone else had to report.
It's commonly said that rental cars are driven harder and with less concern than personal cars. That's probably true (I was guilty of this at least once). You get a car from a company and give it back to the company who then cleans it out and gets it ready for the next person to use as if it was brand new (or close to it). There's a detachment from the other drivers/users. With sharing programs, that's much less the case. Zipcar has clean-up crews that regularly go around but you are much more likely to be handing the car off to another user of the system who is just like you. You don't want to hand them damaged goods. Psychologically, the golden rule weighs heavily in being part of a sharing program so behaving as if it's something personally borrowed as opposed to a service/rental means better care and less bad behavior.
I'm no statistician but...
that just seems like such a weird comparison. People who are riding Hubways or other bike-share bikes are presumably making shorter, less frequent trips than folks who bike to work or school on their own bikes. From what I've observed, they also tend to ride more cautiously, avoid heavy traffic and favor bike paths and protected areas.I've seen a couple of people cruising down Mass. Ave. on Hubways but it's not a frequent thing.
Also worth noting
I read a study (a legitimate, scholarly study) where a guy used proximity sensors to measure how closely cars passed him on his bike and found that cars passed something like three inches closer, on average, when he was wearing his helmet as opposed to not, and also that he was hit twice during the study, and both times while wearing a helmet.
The streets are a weird place.
This is why I use a side flasher
I have a yellow blinky light and use one of those freebie reflector velcro bands to attach it to my left upper arm. Instant space.
Helmets will save your life
Helmets will save your life if you ride at high speed and crash.
They won't do much for you if someone runs you over while drunk texting.
And they don't make much difference if you ride slowly and crash.
Given that these bikes are heavy and have an internal dynamo, you're not likely to get up to a high speed in them.
They're also geared
so low that someone who hasn't ridden a bike in years can propel them around without too much effort.
I don't think anyone is going to get going too fast on them.
Although the idea of a hubway alleycat is amusing....
Wet Track
Low speed ... still saved my life when I went over. 4" crack up the back when I hit on the left side.
In another low speed crash my helmet spared me a minor concussion, but it totally saved my face.
Your mileage may vary.
I slammed into the side of an Escalade at 25mph sans helmet, and came out without even a concussion. (to my credit, I was two blocks from camb. bikes, going to buy a new helmet...) Meanwhile my friend Mike had a nearly identical accident a few months ago while wearing a helmet, and the leverage of the helmet + hunched over riding position (i.e. on a road bike) snapped his neck and he's now paralyzed on his right side.
Helmets are not a cure-all. Caution, vigilance, and a hand on the brake at all times is the best idea.
Certainly this:
But I always wear a helmet, just in case your suggestions don't work and I end up hitting my head in a way that a helmet can protect.
Same.
I wear one 99% of the time. The other 1% is usually when I'm late to work and can't find my helmet because I can't remember where my dead-tired self put it the night before.