Author: Dan Allison

Dan Allison is a transportation advocate in Sacramento, CA. Dan dances and backpacks, as much as possible.

bike share parking requirements

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Not by the rules, but not causing any problems.

I had lost track of the bike share parking requirements, but found the City of Sacramento has a good bike share page now that answers most questions you might have, at http://www.cityofsacramento.org/Public-Works/Transportation/Programs-and-Services/Bicycling-Program/Bike-Share.

People have asked whether you have to lock the bike to a bike rack, and the answer from the page is yes, you do.

They have also asked what to do about improperly parked bikes. The page says to call 311, and they must be removed within two hours of notice to the vendor, JUMP in this case. I’m still going to recommend that you first report to JUMP by emailing support@jumpbikes.com, and report to the city if the issue is not solved in a timely manner. Some people have reported that 311 operators said it was not an issue to report to them, so there is some education yet to happen, but with the system only three weeks old, not all the bugs have been worked out yet.

5.18.220 Retrieval of bicycle-share bicycles.

A bicycle-share business shall, within two hours of notice, retrieve their bicycle-share bicycles that are in any of the following conditions:

  1.                Bicycle-share bicycles that are inoperable or not safe to operate, and parked in the public right-of-way;
  2.                Bicycle-share bicycles that are not parked at a bicycle rack in an upright position;
  3.                Bicycle-share bicycles with a battery or motor determined by the city to be unsafe for public use.
  4.                Bicycle-share bicycles parked in violation of section 10.76.050. (Ord. 2018-0006 § 1)

JUMP app and web view

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The JUMP website has a map view (https://jumpbikes.com/cities/sacramento/, scroll down) that aggregates bikes out-of-hub into a numbered icon, as below at left. The app (at least the iOS app) does not aggregate bikes, as below at right. That makes it harder to tell how many bikes are nearby to a location. These are the same three bikes, very zoomed in.

If bikes are parked right next to each other, and the GPS units have the same location, the additional bikes may not show up at all. I think that if the app opened to an initial view that aggregates the bikes, then you could zoom in to see individual bikes, it would be more useful. The bikes are not always right next to each other, sometimes they are spread out over a block, and you want that information, but I think the first piece of information you want is how many bikes at that location. Of course, what ‘right next to each other’ means depends on the zoom level.

The hubs apparently show in identical ways between the app and the web.

  

JUMP Sac bike count, and locking

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Counts

The count of JUMP bikes showing on the app on the morning of June 9, 6:00AM, is 55 in Sacramento, 8 in West Sacramento, and 20 in Davis, for a total of 93.

On the evening of Monday, June 4, the counts were: Sacramento 69, West Sacramento 21, and Davis 16, for a total of 106.

On the early morning of Saturday, June 2, the counts were: Sacramento 54, West Sacramento 11, Davis 32, for a total of 97.

Though I’m not counting low-battery, in repair bikes, which is much harder to do since they don’t show up on the app map, my impression is that there are many fewer of these out.

Someone from San Francisco created a cool animation that showed the flow of bikes between the financial district and Market Street, during the day, and the outer margins of the service area in the evening. I want to do this for Sacramento, but haven’t had the time yet.

Locking

I have found a few bikes improperly locked, but not many. Other people have commented on this, but it doesn’t seem to be a common problem. In the app, under the left menu, Support > How It Works > Locking a Bike, it says that the bike must be locked to a rack (see the full text below). I’ve seen other detail on locking, but can’t track it down at the moment. Bikes do get locked to sign posts and parking meters. Though this is not technically OK, it seems to be accepted so long as the bike is not blocking sidewalk access or ADA access.

My advice is: try to find a rack, or even better, a hub. If you can’t, find something else secure, but think about how other people might need to move around it. Can a person access their car or parking meter? Does it intrude into the sidewalk? Does it keep people from getting to newspaper racks?

Over time, there will be more hubs, installed by JUMP, and more bike racks in general, most installed by the cities, but for now there are many areas of town where there simply aren’t any bike racks, and sign posts and parking meters are the only option.

In case you are wondering, the JUMP-designed racks, which they call wave racks, and had a base and cutout circle for the lock, are required by the City of Sacramento in any location where a bike might intrude into the roadway, as they enforce locking in such as way as it won’t. In other locations where this is not an issue, or where the rack has not yet been replaced, regular bike racks of various sorts are used.

At the station

You can lock a JUMP bike at any hub location free of charge. Simply secure the U-bar around the rack and insert into the designated holes at the rear of the bike. Give it a gentle tug to confirm it’s secure. The keypad LCD interface will confirm that the reservation is complete.

Outside of a station

You can lock a JUMP bike out-fo-hub at a regular bike rack as long as it’s still inside the system area. Simply secure the U-bar around the rack and insert into the designated holes at the rear of the bike. Give it a gentle tug to confirm it’s secure. The keypad LCD interface will confirm that the reservation is complete.

Using the hold feature

Need to grab a coffee on your ride? Not near a hub location? Need to hang onto the bike? You can use the ‘hold’ button on the keypad to keep your reservation running, and lock the bike out-of-hub. You will not be charged the out-of-hub fee. Lock the U-bar around a secure bike rack, and check the keypad to make sure the screen indicates the bike is on hold. Note that your rental is still running during this period.

Using the repair feature

Got a flat tire during your ride? Press the ‘repair’ button on the keypad and secure the U-bar around a rack and lock it into the rear of the bike. Give it a gentle tug to confirm it’s secure. Details about the issue will be send to the operator letting them know your had a problem. The bike will be unavailable until the issue is resolved.

JUMP tidbits

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I ran into a JUMP rebalancer at 16th & Q today. Neither of us had much time to talk, but I did gather some tidbits.

  • The warehouse is in West Sacramento.
  • The Tower Bridge Preview (white SoBi) bikes are going into storage, for now. Didn’t ask about the ultimate disposition. He was picking up the SoBi bikes, dead and live ones, so they should all be gone from the hubs soon.
  • Three are job openings working for JUMP here in the Sacramento region. They are listed on Indeed at https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=bike+share&l=Sacramento%2C+CA.
  • They have a white delivery van for moving bikes. I don’t know if they are moving any bikes with the bike trailer that was used with the Tower Bridge system, but I would hope so.

credit for bike returns, someday

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JUMP just implemented in San Francisco a credit for returning low battery bikes to ‘drop zones’. At the moment, the only drop zone in San Francisco is the Bluxome Street warehouse which I wrote about In SF. So far, there are no drop zones in Sacramento at all, though if the San Francisco pattern holds, the first would be at the JUMP distribution warehouse (no, I don’t know where it is – anyone else know?). The SoBi warehouse was near the 65th St light rail station, but I don’t know whether JUMP is there or someplace else. I had heard it was going to be in West Sacramento.

On my JUMP app, bikes are appearing with the $ bike icon. I don’t know if that is true of other people’s apps, I may have something that not everyone else has because I’m a member of both San Francisco and Sacramento systems, or because I’m an early adopter and frequent user. Anyone else?

If I tap on this icon, it offers a credit for returning the low battery bike to a drop zone, however, this is false for Sacramento; there is no drop zone and there is no credit. I’ve reported it to JUMP support and I presume they will fix it.

So, when will this come to pass in Sacramento? I don’t know, but I’ll let you know when I do.

 

what a difference

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I posted Friday evening about the lack of bikes. Things have changed a great deal in a short period. As of Monday evening, on the east side of the river, there are 19 bikes at hubs, and 50 bikes out of hubs. Friday, the numbers were zero and 14. And there are 42 bikes in the central city, whereas Friday there were only 16. This is progress. I suspect it just took someone rocking the boat to make a movement. But there is a long ways to go. There should be about 200 bikes in Sacramento, 50 in West Sacramento, and 50 in Davis. West Sac has 21 available, and Davis 16.

out of system area fee

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If you look at the fee page in the JUMP app, it will presumably look like mine:

I was surprised to see no ‘Out of system area fee’, so I asked support, who said “There is a $25 out of system fee for locking bikes out of the system area in Sacramento.  In general, the first instance is waived and an email is sent educating the user about the system area.  Any future out of system locks will result in the fee being charged.”

more on JUMP Sac

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Chris sent me a capture of the map from the JUMP app for Sacramento, which reminded me that a picture is worth a thousand words. At this scale, the bikes and hubs are just dots, but zooming in reveals that of the 39 hubs on the east side of the river, three have one bike, one has three bikes, and all the others are empty. There are only eight bikes out of hubs, for a total of 14 bikes. That’s it! There may be a few bikes in motion, but Sunday evenings in Sacramento are pretty slow, so there would not be many.

Here is another perspective. This morning I captured the list of bikes available from where I was staying in the Tenderloin. Keep in mind that the Tenderloin is the least bike-rich area urban San Francisco, but there was a bike 0.4 miles away, with nearly a full charge, and nine bikes within 0.6 miles, only one of which was low on charge.

Sacramento? These was captured this evening (Sunday about 9:00PM). There is not a single bike at any hub within 0.8 miles of where I live. And I live in the central city. On the second page of locations, there are six bikes, 0.9 to 1.2 miles away, but only one of them has an acceptable charge.

 

two weeks in – failure?

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The JUMP bike share system was rolled out for Sacramento, West Sacramento, and Davis two weeks ago, on May 16. I was very excited, as I’ve used the JUMP system in San Francisco a number of times, and have used the non-electric SoBi (JUMP was formerly SoBi – Social Bicycles) here and many other cities. I’ve been watching the bikes and app during the two weeks, and used the bikes occasionally. Let me be blunt – the system is failing.

jump_in-repair.jpgThere were supposed to be 300 bikes at roll-out, another 600 later, but there were never 300 bikes out, and there are far less now. More than half the bikes I see are ‘in repair’. Some of these may actually be in repair for maintenance reasons, but if so, it doesn’t bode well for brand new bikes that they are breaking down so soon.,  I strongly suspect most of them have batteries to low to operate, and the bikes puts itself into repair mode rather than letting the battery get run down completely. I’ve seen bikes in repair be in the same place several days later, still in repair.

While out this evening looking at hub locations and bikes, I saw four young people get dropped off at a hub with four bikes by a ride hail. They were excited about using the bikes, until they discovered that only two of the bikes were working, the other two were in repair. They were stuck. I bet that they won’t use the system again.

I saw another bike on the app, and tried to rent it, but after quite some time, the display said the bike was not available. What does that mean? Why? It was not in repair, it was not on hold, it just wasn’t available. I tried it three times, same result.

I’m seeing little rebalancing going on. There are almost no bikes in downtown/midtown, what bikes there are are scattered around the edges. This is not a daily flow of bikes in and out of the central city, rather, the bikes have gone out of the central city and are not returning.

I found two bikes that showed up on the app but the bike itself said they were on on hold/reserve, but neither actually were. They had been unused for more than an hour, probably all day, and supposedly bikes can’t be placed on hold for more than 60 minutes. Since they were on hold, they could not be rented through the keypad. However, I was able to reserve one of the bikes, and then rent it, so it wasn’t really on hold.

I rode that bike, taking it back to a hub, and locking it, with the display showing the rental finished and the bike again available. But the app still shows the bike in use, and is accruing time against my account. Did the bike put itself into hold? Not sure yet, still waiting to see what happens. After an hour and a half, getting tired of being locked out of the app, I went back to the bike. The keypad said the bike was on hold. So I put in my code, and it said the bike was in use. It cancelled itself out after a few minutes, but the app was still counting. So I rented the bike again (remember, the display said the bike is available), The app started counting at 43 minutes. I locked the bike and the app finally let go and returned to the map. I can’t see how much it cost because the app is now locked into JUMP SF, and there is no way to change it to JUMP Sacramento. Interesting, you can use http://app.socialbicycles.com to switch between systems, but the app won’t let you switch.

At 4:00AM, well past the time when it is likely that any bikes would be in use, I count 54 bikes in Sacramento (only 16 in the central city), 11 bikes in West Sacramento, and 32 bikes in Davis, for a total of 97 bikes. If there really were 300 bikes, that means that more than 2/3 of them are out of service.

Disappointed, concerned…

more highways

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In contrast to the climate-friendly awards under the TIRCP program (SacRT awarded TIRCP funds for light rail), the Congested Corridors Program and Local Partnership Program are larded up with climate-unfriendly highways.

In the Congested Corridors Program, the SACOG region did well, receiving $15M for ‘Sac 5 Corridor Enhancements/1-5 HOV Lanes-Phase 1’, and $110.3M for ‘US 50 Multimodal Corridor Enhancements’. Not funded were additional ‘US 50 Multimodal Corridor Enhancements’, ‘US 50 Camino Corridor Safety and Community Access Mitigation’, ‘South Watt Avenue Improvements, Phase 1’, ‘West Capitol Avenue Road Rehabilitation and Safety Enhancements’ and ‘Electrifying Bus Transit in the Capital Region’.

In the Local Partnership Program, the SACOG region received $1.1M for ‘Placerville: Western Placerville Interchanges Phase 2’, $20M for ‘Capital SouthEast Connector Expressway’, $5M for ‘Downtown Sacramento Grid 3.0 Mobility: Network Improvements on the Grid’, and $2M for ‘Woodland: West Main Street Bicycle/Pedestrian Mobility and Safety’. These amounts are relatively small because they are matches for local funding in the self-help counties, counties which raise funds through transportation sales taxes. Not funded were ‘Pioneer Trail / U.S. 50 Intersection Safety Improvement Project’, ‘U.S. Highway 50 Camino Safety Project’, ‘Upper Broadway Bike Lanes and Pedestrian Connection Project’, ‘Broadway Sidewalks Project’, ‘Ray Lawyer Drive Overlay Project’, ‘Highway 65 Gap Closure Project’, ‘Hazel Avenue Improvement Project – Phase III’, ‘Watt Avenue Complete Street Improvements, Phase 1’, ‘South Watt Avenue Improvement Project, Phase 1’, ‘Downtown Sacramento Grid 3.0 Mobility Project: Network Improvements on the Grid’, ‘White Rock Road Four and Two Lane Improvements’, ‘Greenback Lane Complete Street Improvements, Phase 1’, ‘White Rock Road Two Lane Improvements’, ‘Grant Line Road Operational Improvements Project’, ‘Elverta Road Widening Project: Dutch Haven Boulevard to Watt Avenue’, and ‘North Beale Road Complete Streets Project- Phase II’. These rejections might be a sign that capacity-expanding, traffic-inducing, sprawl-promoting projects are less popular than they once were, though the Capital SouthEast Connector Expressway argues otherwise.