I used to be a fan of this service in Germany for a while. Features are the same (Track it online or grab one from the street, unlock it with your phone, leave it everywhere you want<i>), it's operated by the 'Deutsche Bahn' railway comp.<p>It was cheap, easy and the bikes were of good quality, plus you can't beat the flexibility of grabbing one of those to meet a friend on the other side of the city.<p>Great to see that the concept spreads further and further.<p></i>) They define a general area in their TOS/contract. You're not supposed to leave it outside of the city limits, for example. You can leave, of course, but need to drive back into the city limits to drop it off.
The article's statement that these bikes wouldn't get stolen didn't really assure me, so I looked at the stats for my city's bike sharing service. According to one news report:<p>> One bike went missing the first year and it was later recovered. Last year all were accounted for. This year three or four are missing, but Dossett expects them to turn up.<p>I suppose the distinctiveness of the bicycles has something to do with it, plus, they're relatively difficult to maneuver.
>The bike still need to be returned to designated spots at the end of the ride.<p>can't you lock any bike sharing bike anywhere, as long as you return it to the designated rack at the end of the ride? what's new here?
We've had a similar program to this in Germany for some years now:
<a href="http://www.callabike-interaktiv.de/" rel="nofollow">http://www.callabike-interaktiv.de/</a><p>Within inner city limits, you can use your smartphone to get an unlock code (or call a hotline), then use the bike for 8 cents per minute as long as you wish and drop it off anywhere (again, within city limits).
"If you live in certain parts of the world, like France, Spain, China, Italy, or Germany, you already are familiar with the joys of having an extensive bike-sharing system readily available. North America is slowly catching on, with cities like Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York City gradually rolling out bike-share systems. "<p>Or, you know, Canada, where Bixi developed the system that now powers Boston's, D.C.'s, and NYC's shares.
General Question: What is power supply on the bicycle? Both for GPS theft recovery and for the E-unlock device? Did not see that mentioned in the post, wondering of any of the users might know?
Social Bicycles is another company doing something very similar based out of NYC -- <a href="http://socialbicycles.com/" rel="nofollow">http://socialbicycles.com/</a>
Its a cool idea, Google started the 'G-bike' idea when I was working there and it was fun to be able to grab a bike and head from the center of campus to one of the outer buildings.<p>But there were some hilarious failure modes too, all company meet at Shoreline, huge pile of bikes at Shoreline Ampitheater and none on campus.<p>Bike fail? No clear way how to get it fixed, 'dead' bikes would accumulate in the periphery buildings.<p>And of course there was 'diffusion' into the greater Mtn View area :-)
I've love to grab a bike at Embarcadero or Montgomery BART and ride it to near pier 39, where I work. I'd even return it in the evening. I'm not sure about having to make it available at some designated spot, though. Use the GPS!