[HN Gopher] The Radical Roots of Bikesharing
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The Radical Roots of Bikesharing
Author : occurrence
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-03-02 23:16 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| mFixman wrote:
| Bikesharing makes visiting cities cities much more enjoyable:
| instead of having to choose between travelling underground or
| having to keep track of a rented bike, you can enjoy cycling with
| a shared bike and not worry about locking it or having it
| returned during working hours before you leave.
|
| Even if this whole thing started as an anarchist experiment, it
| makes a lot of sense as a way to boost tourism. It's a pity
| cities like Barcelona restrict these bikes to residents.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I'd love to read more about the lives of the initial Provo
| activists, and to hear their opinions of how their ideas and
| actions transpired within and outside of their hopes and regrets.
| Their opinions of the issues of today would be very valuable.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| First time I loaded the page, a giant scroll-locked ad took up
| more than half the page, and music started blaring. I go back
| again and no music. Scroll too far and you have a new URL, which
| if you refresh the page on, now you can't go back to the old
| article.
|
| I feel like this is all an artifact of web browser design. No
| stand-alone application would work like this.
| uoaei wrote:
| It's an artifact of cludgy anti-scraper design that sacrifices
| user experience at the altar of copyright.
| the-dude wrote:
| There is an error in the article : it suggests 3,300 deaths/year
| in Amsterdam @ 1971.
|
| This should be for the whole of The Netherlands.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 'Bikesharing' means 'often not having a bike (your bike!) when
| you need it'
|
| That's a big obstacle to the idea. If you're an idealist student
| with no external repercussions to a screwed-up schedule, sure go
| right ahead and lose your bike. But anybody more embedded in a
| society is going to find bikesharing useless really fast.
| Finnucane wrote:
| That must be why usage of the urban bikeshare programs is
| growing so fast.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Still tiny, so a few new programs can look like explosive
| growth.
|
| And be honest; there are stories of bikes abandoned in piles
| and thrown into rivers in frustration by pedestrians. It's
| not been a clear winner yet?
| asoneth wrote:
| As a counterpoint, when I commuted to an office in NYC I relied
| on CitiBike for the last leg of my journey, as did several
| thousand other office workers.
|
| I will admit there were a few days where I stood in a line
| outside of Penn Station to wait for a bike, and on those days
| biking was no faster than taking the subway. New York has a lot
| of commuters coming into the center which meant a shortage of
| bikes near train stations in the morning and a shortage of
| docks there at the end of the day. (They had workers in box
| trucks rebalancing, and eventually an scheme [1] akin to
| dynamic pricing to incentivize regular users to rebalance bikes
| themselves.)
|
| I think a larger issue preventing the success of bike share is
| the fact that the US is an automobile-first culture so biking
| is unsafe in most parts of the US. The first thing I noticed
| when seeing bike commuters in other countries was the number of
| there were old folks, kids, and women biking for transportation
| in the city -- unlike the US where the majority of bike
| commuters are adult men with a high risk tolerance.
|
| [1] https://citibikenyc.com/bike-angels
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Reed College in Portland, OR has had a similar "commie bike"
| system in place for many years. At the start of the year/semester
| students go to goodwill, get a few dozen bikes - often children's
| bikes, since they are cheaper and less likely to be stolen - and
| then spray paint them red. The bikes are placed on campus and
| anyone can use them to get around.
| tokai wrote:
| Now the true radical bikesharing scheme is to leave your bike
| unlocked.
| lorenzfx wrote:
| Which is what the article describes.
| tokai wrote:
| No it isn't. It's describing a bikesharing system with no
| payment system. I mean leaving _your_ personal bike unlocked,
| and taking another when its missing.
| asoneth wrote:
| If you are purchasing a bicycle with the expectation that
| others will use it and you will in turn use theirs, then
| I'm not sure the term "personal bike" applies.
|
| It's more like your personal contribution or donation to a
| collective scheme. This seems like what this article
| describes.
| uoaei wrote:
| Blindly fumbling through the night, you bump into something
| foreign. Feeling it, brushing your palms and fingertips
| across it, you realize what it is: _the fundamental
| contradiction of private property_.
| consp wrote:
| That's basically what some student have been doing here for
| decades now, though not out of idealism. The disadvantage
| is that sometimes a local entrepreneur comes by to sell you
| your own bike back for 20 euros cash.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I have owned bikes that were so crap that I never bothered
| locking them.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| The Burning Man event has a problem with people taking those
| unlocked bicycles. Unless you're prepared to steal someone
| else's bicycle, you're walking back to camp.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| People forget that stealing is a form of radical self-
| reliance
| tokai wrote:
| >Unless you're prepared to steal someone else's bicycle,
| you're walking back to camp
|
| Thats the whole point.
| the-dude wrote:
| Tangential : there is a Dutch saying _Eerst mijn fiets terug_
| [0], which roughly translates to _First I want my bike back_.
|
| It is/was a meme which targets Germans as the Nazi occupiers
| confiscated some Dutch bikes during their bike sharing program at
| the time ( this is a bit trivialised ).
|
| [0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eerst_mijn_fiets_terug, Dutch
| only, sorry.
| agumonkey wrote:
| convenience link https://nl-m-wikipedia-
| org.translate.goog/wiki/Eerst_mijn_fi...
| kiliantics wrote:
| there was a bike share in the 1940s? that's pretty amazing
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(page generated 2022-03-03 23:02 UTC)