Docks Off: U.S. cities are being invaded by dock-less bike share.
Henry Grabar at Slate writes: Docks Off: U.S. cities are being invaded by dock-less bike share. It’s going to be messy—and worth it.
I was interviewed, but the email quote was used:
`Of course, it is easier to take a photo of 1,000 discarded bicycles than 60 million rides a day. I asked David Levinson, a professor of transportation [sic, he meant `transport'] at the University of Sydney, whether dock-less bike share was a VC-funded bubble or the future of short-distance transportation.
“Yes,” he wrote back. “It’s like the internet in 1999.”'
A good overview of the issue. I think cities will need to develop bike drop off areas on each blockface, somewhere in verge (boulevard, grassy strip). Bikeshare companies will need to geofence more accurately to ensure bikes are dropped there. This will resolve much of the problem.
Also see: Peter Simek in D Magazine (2017-12-19) Is This the Future of Dallas' Bike Share Experiment. That article quotes the above quote.