JUMP Sac bike count, and locking

2018/06/092023/03/19 Dan Allison2 Comments

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.

two weeks in – failure?

2018/06/02 Dan Allison1 Comment

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.

There 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…

Letter to Ryan Rzepecki

2018/04/13 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

To summarize: Don’t. Please, don’t.

Why? Why not be bought out by Uber? Because the objectives and culture are not a good fit.

JUMP (SoBi) has a model of disruption based on offering a better product, meeting the need of people, and making a profit in the good work. Every SoBi employee I’ve had interactions with had a passion for making the world a better place through bike share. When there were problems, each person I spoke with or emailed made sure to get it right. SoBi works with the cities it goes into, negotiating the terms but wanting to make sure it works for the company, the city, and the users.

Uber is the exact opposite. Their business model of disruption is to break every law they can get away with breaking, to cut every corner. Their intent is to drive every competitor out of business, as they must if they are ever to stop losing money. They treat employees like dirt (yes, the drivers are employees by definition of labor law, though at least in the US Uber is so lawyered up that the federal government and state governments have either not been able to compel Uber to follow the law, or don’t care to. In every city in which it operates, in the US and in Europe, Uber has violated law after law after law.

These two things do not match, and can never match.

One of the great hopes that I have for electric bike share is that it can displace many of the ride hailing trips that exist because it is time competitive with and cost positive over ride hailing in denser urban areas. I see uncontrolled ride hailing as the worst thing that could happen to our cities, and anything that lessens that damage is a great thing. That puts the ideal of bike share in direct conflict with the idea of ride hailing. The terms ‘shared mobility’ and ‘mobility as a service’ are all the rage these days, but I don’t see any mode that uses low occupancy energy guzzling cars (electric just shifts impacts from fossil fuel burning at the car to fossil fuel burning at the power plant, at least so far) as complementing any other mode. They are not a complement, they are a competition.

But the biggest conflict is on the streets. Bike riders, the users of SoBi and JUMP bikes, want more than anything to be safe. But they can’t be safe so long as poorly trained commercial drivers (Uber) terrorize bicyclists by driving over the speed limit, making sudden right and left turns, and looking at smart phones instead of at the road. Uber drivers block bike lanes more often than other ride hailing companies. I’m not sure why, but suspect it has to do with drivers adopting the attitudes of their company.

When I am bicycling in San Francisco (headed there for the weekend right now), I can hardly even use bike lanes on many streets because they are blocked so often by ride hailing. Do they look when pulling in? Do they look when pulling out? Seldom. As a vehicular bicyclist, I know how to deal with this, to just use the general purpose lane and avoid the bike lane, but I assure you, this is not the experience most bicyclists are looking for.

Bicyclists want safety. Uber does not.

I am really concerned that this is the beginning of the end of SoBi/JUMP, and that would make me very sad. Uber may kill off bike share once it realizes that the values and goals of bike share are opposed to their own. Another not unlikely possibility is that Uber will go under, under the weight of endless lawsuits that will sooner or later start to be successful. If you run a criminal enterprise, it will eventually catch up with you, whether you are Uber or the president.

To summarize: Don’t. Please don’t

@jumpbikes @ryrzny