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Citizen complaint of the day: Dockless wonder now wheelless
By adamg on Wed, 08/08/2018 - 10:25am
A concerned citizen filed a 311 complaint about an Ant bike with no wheels on Topeka Street at Southampton.
Earlier:
Dockless bike sleeps with the fishes in East Boston.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Why Bother?
I mean those 25 cents you'll get for a wheel that weighs more than my entire bike sure won't get you far in life. Why not just take the whole bike at least? I am sure you can readily disable whatever tracking/locking mechanism is in them. I don't think you can even be charged if caught "stealing" one of these, considering they were just abandoned on a sidewalk.
Ultimately I just don't understand the point of these rental bikes. If there was a nuclear missile on the way and the only way out of the blast radius in time was to ride a rental bike, I would just sit down and prepare to die.
Clearly, you never rode one,
Clearly, you never rode one, otherwise you would know the utility. In Paris, for example, rental bikes like Velib (which has gone to the shitter recently) are the best way to get around. I see people riding Blue bikes and now Lime almost every single day. So they have some sort of utility. I just wish there were dedicated spots for these dockless creatures so that they wouldn't a. clutter public spaces in certain cases and b. trigger the outrage of people who either hate anything bike-related or anything they don't understand.
I don't care for the wheels or the seat of one of these bikes and don't know why people would steal them, but the tires are worth something (probably around $35 new), the rear hub with internal gears is a neat piece of equipment, but I bet the dynamo hub up front is the biggest prize.
Internal gears? Dynamo hub?
The Ant bikes I saw in Lynn were single-speed with no lights.
Can you say more about Vélib?
What has happened to it? It was the model for Montréal bike sharing, which in turn was the model for all of the docked US systems such as Hubway/Blue Bikes.
Velib has really changed how I've seen Paris
I went back in 2008 and I recall seeing the docks there but never had a chance to try them since I was doing architectural guided tours and didn't have much time to myself. Flashforward to 2016 and I had a chance to ride them all over the city, its simply amazing.
The docks are everywhere, there are so many incredible parts of the city you can cruise around safely and get this, the drivers aren't homicidal! (thats sarcasm) I was dating a Parisan and her mother was strongly opposed to me riding because "Parisan drivers are insane!" but I dunno, even without a helmet I never felt anywhere near the levels of fear or intimidation from motorists like I do in Boston.
More recently though Mayor Hidalgo has transformed spaces solely set aside for cars and given them back to pedestrians and cyclists, most notable along the Seine.
Oh and even more exciting, the Velib system is or already has rolled out e-bikes in some areas! I'm heading back this September and cannot wait to explore further parts of the city. Honestly bike shares are the single biggest reason that I can aimlessly explore cities like Paris, hell I recently rode the bikeshare in Las Vegas and while its not on the strip, really got a chance to explore the areas outside there.
I would make better progress getting away from a nuke
on a rental bike, then I would a car. Cause you know the roads would be full of cars stuck in traffic.
That being said, with the exception of you, no one is considering nukes when they see rental bikes.
They're Like Shopping Carts — A Few Will Get Damaged Or Stolen
The stores always have plenty of shopping carts for customers to use, even though some are inevitably damaged or stolen. It's not that big of a problem, but it is a cost of doing business.
Nobody buys stolen shopping carts, and no one will buy stolen dockless bicycles. Wheeling and dealing with just their stolen wheels wouldn't be very appealing either.
Bwaha!
Bwaha!
Oh sorry, I meant -- thoughts and prayers.
Ants scavenge their own
It was possibly broken and dead. Detecting the oleic acid it gave off, the other Antbikes descended on it, recycling whatever they could use for the good of the colony.
Plenty more homeless bikes available in China.
Make them an offer.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/08/china-abandoned-bike-share-gra...
I was not impressed by Ant Bikes
when I took a guided bike tour of Lynn murals Monday night. The tourists used a mixture of personal bikes (like mine) and Ant bikes which were provided free to registrants. The Ant employees had a lot of trouble unlocking the number of bikes we needed, causing our start to be delayed. The kickstands were difficult and non-intuitive to use. The bikes were single speed, even though Lynn has several significant hills (fortunately, we stayed in the flat downtown). And they had no headlights or taillights.