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I think Andrew hit the nail on the head. If people are using this for daily commuting, then the value of just getting your own bike goes up tremendously.

However, Alta is still going about this the wrong way. I've made these points before, but maybe they're worth repeating... Asking people to balance bikes shouldn't be a contest, it should be an ever-present incentive. The ideal system would grant people rewards for riding from a station that has more than 3 bikes to a station that has fewer than 3 bikes. It shouldn't matter the time of day.

I'm also still not convinced that the vans are servicing stations as efficiently as possible. During rush hour, only the busiest stations should be serviced. I happened to be up in Tenleytown during rush hour and saw one of Alta's vans working at the station. Sorry to anybody who lives or works around an outlying station, but fighting traffic to service a single remote station during rush hour is not efficient.

It's probably too late now, but expanding downtown stations at the expense of increasing neighborhood stations was probably a mistake. CaBi would probably work great and stay more balanced if it remained simply as a way to connect neighborhoods as opposed to service commuters. Similar to highways, if you don't build additional capacity, then people will find other ways to commute.

by Adam L on Jun 6, 2011 2:56 pm • link • report