As someone who spent a long time biking, driving, and taking public transit in Boston this is sort of laughable.<p>A bike sharing program is a neat idea, but actually riding bikes in Boston is a terrible experience. The roads are in bad shape, there are no bike lanes, and the drivers are homicidal.<p>Public transit in Boston certainly isn't bad, it's better than most cities I've lived in and it may very well be better than the valley. But the subway is generally only helpful if you're going to and from downtown. If you say live in Somerville and work in Allston, you're pretty much out of luck, unless you're willing to transfer between the bus and the subway a few times.<p>In general I found having a car was a pretty key part of living in Boston.
I live in Boston, and have lived in Silicon Valley. Biking in Boston is downright scary.<p>Having a bike sharing program is great, but Boston needs to invest in more dedicated bike lanes, and bike paths before it can get anywhere near SF in bikability.<p>Plus you are visiting when its 40ish degress out, not 20 and the Hub system isn't available in the winter.
Hubway has a real-time feed of bike availability [1]. I built a little web site that shows the bike stations and T stations on a map [2], along with real-time data for both bike and T stations. Bike stations with available bikes are shown in green and ones without are red. Also, it's open source [3].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.thehubway.com/data/stations/bikeStations.xml" rel="nofollow">http://www.thehubway.com/data/stations/bikeStations.xml</a>
[2] <a href="http://bikeboston.herokuapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://bikeboston.herokuapp.com/</a>
[3] <a href="https://github.com/amonat/bikeboston" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/amonat/bikeboston</a>
I've used this system in Minneapolis, which is almost identical to the costs and station density here. It's OK for certain people I suppose. If you are a local, it's better to bring your own bike. If you are visiting, the fees are very high since you have to start paying extras for a few minutes overage. Overages are easy to get because the stations are usually no where near where you are going unless you are doing short tourist jaunts. So you end up walking for 30 minutes to a bike, riding the bike for 15 minutes to a station roughly in the direction you are going, parking to avoid the fee, transferring to a new bike to continue, now you have to go further, then you get to closest destination station, park, walk 30 minutes to actual destination, and reverse to go home. Spend too long stuck at a red light and now you pay a fee for late. Want to ride somewhere, drop something off, then come back? To save on fees you have to factor in a bunch of stations and swaps, so a 40 minutes bike ride round trip if you had your OWN bike is now 90 minutes including all the walking to stations and swapping.<p>So just pay the fees. Or take the bus, which is cheaper and faster. Or rent a car and be done with all this.<p>The idea such inefficient systems are being taxpayer funded in some cities is offensive.<p>I agree with the other comment that it is quite difficult to navigate Boston traffic with a bike since the city is not built to accomodate it for the most part. Police are also highly aggressive, belligerant, uneducated, ignorant and thuggish and risk of being arrested and harassed for not being in the correct lane or whatever are significant.
Bike sharing is coming to San Francisco and the Valley this Summer. <a href="http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/bike-share-coming-to-sf-and-silicon-valley-this-july/" rel="nofollow">http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/bike-share-coming-to-sf...</a>
I've never lived in Boston, but I've lived in SF and current live in the Valley and I have to say that SF is awesome for public transit (when it's on time) and SV is better for bike because of the bike lanes. SamTrans on the peninsula is a joke, but the VTA and CalTrain are pretty good. They don't have the extensive coverage of Muni in SF, but if you aren't willing to walk a few blocks to get from a transit stop then you need a car.
Wow it's a redbox for bikes, neat.<p>But unfortunately it would be destroyed and/or gross as hell in most cities that I've lived in.<p>Nothing wrong with owning your own bike, $150 buys a really descent bike these days.