Biking in Boston

Could you give details on to the location and length of the cycle track?
 
I've been by there and looks to me like an ordinary bike lane - I guess I'll have to get a closer look.

And yeah, I've seen the pedicabs parked there. Interesting fact: pedicabs want $50 to haul me home to Brookline from that area. Ha.
 
Any data yet on whether HubWay is financially sustainable? Its an important question, much like we would ask for Medicare or Social Security.
 
Do you really think the proponents of these things give a rat's ass about financial viability?
 
kmp1284 said:
Do you really think the proponents of these things give a rat's ass about financial viability?
Click to expand...

Of course not. Bixi got the cash for the stations and bikes, so failing just costs Alta some jobs and tourists don't get to ride anymore. Still, numbers would be good to see to figure out if expansion is warranted.
 
Mark02474 said:
Any data yet on whether HubWay is financially sustainable? Its an important question, much like we would ask for Medicare or Social Security.
Click to expand...

Ladies and Germs, please don't feed the troll.
 
Do we really want to continue dwelling on how much Hubway costs? It has got to be less than a proverbial drop in the bucket in terms of transportation infrastructure spending.
 
jass said:
Could you give details on to the location and length of the cycle track?
Click to expand...

The "cycletrack" is a 5' or so painted lane with a 2'-3' painted buffer.

It extends from Boylston St at least 180' to Bukowski's Tavern but may extend to Scotia St for a total length of 325'.
 
Lurker said:
The level of membership and use was sufficient to sustain the system prior to this year's expansion. The numbers for this year post expansion have not been made available yet.

http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/promote/bikeshareintheus.pdf
Federal Highway Administration's guide to bike-share.
Click to expand...

That's good. I hope they do some planning, though sharing that with member communities, and them with us would be good.

The FHA doc is interesting. They got the financials from various systems, but didn't share details. Just that system price averaged $4,200-$5,400 per bike and operating cost is $150-$200 per bicycle per month. Reportedly, solar powered systems are on the higher end.
 
Hubway is quickly becoming a victim of its own success. Rush hours are becoming a total nightmare in many locations. At 6 pm yesterday there were a total of 15 empty stations, usually clustered in groups of 3 or 4. Longwood was totally empty, as were most of the downtown stations. I've heard reports that Kendall is often empty in the afternoon as well.

People are using Hubway to commute, but the problem is unless the stations are in an area with office AND housing, the imbalance quickly results in stations filling up or emptying out quickly. Hubway can try to rebalance all they want, but they simply won't be able to do it fast enough. In front of my office in Post Office Square, the station fills up in about 15 minutes after they empty it in the morning. From what I can tell they empty it about 3 times on average between 7 and 9 am, and it's still not enough.

I don't know what the solution to this is other than creating bigger stations and more of them. There is apparently a HUGE unmet demand for bicycle commuting in Boston, particularly when you don't have to own or maintain your own bike. But unless Hubway tackles the imbalance problem, they are going to have a lot of very unhappy customers on their hands.
 
It's not a unique problem for hubway. It would be like saying the T is crowded going downtown in the morning and not outbound. To balance commuting patterns is way beyond hubway. For that to happen there has to be people going from downtown to other areas, so in conclusion more residents downtown.
 
cden4;154074 People are using Hubway to commute said:
The alternative is mass transportation! Imbalance is fundamental to rental bike/car/U-Haul sharing unless there is some natural balancer in traffic flows. I think the solution is to pick station locations for high traffic and natural flow balance. Driving bikes around in a van to rebalance stations is ultimately futile, expensive, and unsustainable. Good trip data and land use analysis, then experimentation with different locations will help. Planners will analyze neighborhoods indefinitely, producing lots of charts, graphs, and predictions, but in the end, trying out locations generates real data and a step towards ever better service. Boston is a new system with fresh data and little location adjustment yet.

This isn't criticism of bike sharing, its just the nature of the beast. I think it fills a niche need and ought to be optimized to do what it does best to succeed. Making these systems financially sustainable requires listening to the government advice cited in the post above. Trying to fit a square peg in a round hole or use a hammer for a screwdriver task leads to failure.
Click to expand...
 
cden4 said:
Hubway is quickly becoming a victim of its own success. Rush hours are becoming a total nightmare in many locations. At 6 pm yesterday there were a total of 15 empty stations, usually clustered in groups of 3 or 4. Longwood was totally empty, as were most of the downtown stations. I've heard reports that Kendall is often empty in the afternoon as well.

People are using Hubway to commute, but the problem is unless the stations are in an area with office AND housing, the imbalance quickly results in stations filling up or emptying out quickly. Hubway can try to rebalance all they want, but they simply won't be able to do it fast enough. In front of my office in Post Office Square, the station fills up in about 15 minutes after they empty it in the morning. From what I can tell they empty it about 3 times on average between 7 and 9 am, and it's still not enough.

I don't know what the solution to this is other than creating bigger stations and more of them. There is apparently a HUGE unmet demand for bicycle commuting in Boston, particularly when you don't have to own or maintain your own bike. But unless Hubway tackles the imbalance problem, they are going to have a lot of very unhappy customers on their hands.
Click to expand...


The solution is redundancy and larger stations. Hubway has small stations on average, especially compared to DC. Paris has small stations, but sometimes there are two a block, so lots of docks.

Another solution, which our system proposed, was specially designed stations at certain key spots that take up less space than the standard docks but fit more bikes as the bikes can be stored in a more space-saving manner (think vertical). Dont have a picture now, but the concept wasnt invented by us, its in the use in the netherlands.



Theres also the tradeoff between high capital costs (more docks) and higher operating costs (more staff).

If Hubway cant afford, or cant get more docks due to manufacturing issues....not a big deal!


Example, say there is a heavy volume between kendall and north station (just a guess, not sure what the volume is, the point is two stations where lots of people travel between)

The current method involves having (all example numbers) 20 bikes at kendall (full station) which get ridden to NS, leaving Kendall empty. A van and crew pick them up and then drive them back (emptying NS). That leads long periods where the station is empty, and the van is slow as the rebalancing is done during the traffic rush hour. Not efficient, and not cheap.



Solution:

Have a van parked at kendall with 50 bikes (without the need for 50 docks). Have a staff member with a portable fob reader that lets commuters grab a bike and go. At NS, staff exists to check the bikes in to a van there (again no docks needed).
 
Instead of a van to shuttle bicycles back for people to ride, the simple, direct solution is to load people into vans and just shuttle them.
 
Mark02474 said:
Instead of a van to shuttle bicycles back for people to ride, the simple, direct solution is to load people into vans and just shuttle them.
Click to expand...

At rush hour, is it is likely that the bikes move faster than the van. Also, not everyone has the same destination.
 
Mark02474 said:
Instead of a van to shuttle bicycles back for people to ride, the simple, direct solution is to load people into vans and just shuttle them.
Click to expand...

Agreed, it seems like we're getting into Rube Goldberg machine territory here.

Someone should come up with a type of vehicle in which you can load a lot of people, that transports people along fixed routes for a small fee.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top