SACOG bike share policy

2023/05/17 Dan Allison1 Comment

The SACOG Regional Bike Share Policy Steering Committee met this week on Monday (agenda). This was the first meeting of the committee in quite some while, long enough that the staff member did not remember when the last one was. The committee is almost entirely new people since the last meeting. Members are: Alberto Ayala (Sac Metro Air Quality District), James Corless (SACOG), Dawnté Early (City of West Sacramento), Caity Maple (City of Sacramento council member D5), Katie Valenzuela (City of Sacramento council member D4), and Chair Josh Chapman (City of Davis).

There was a presentation by SACOG staff Nicole Zhi Ling Porter on the status of bike share/scooter share (or micromobility) in the region, as well as questions that the policy committee will help answer. The main question is the ownership and operations model, with three options”

privately owned and operated (the current model)
publicly owned and operated
publicly owned and privately operated (under contract)

These are not exclusive categories. Several existing bike share programs have detail models for operations, using some sort of public/private partnership.

The City of Davis and UC Davis are undertaking a study to determine the model they want to use and the operators. They did not rejoin the regional program after the pandemic shutdown. It has apparently not been decided that they will not rejoin the program, but they wanted to consider other options. There may be an announcement about this in the near future.

The current bike share fleet is about one-third the number of bikes that were available before the pandemic, which was about 900. Sacramento was in fact the most successful bike share system in the country, as measured by number of rides per bike per day. The system is now an also-ran.

Several committee members mentioned that rental costs were now much higher, and that was probably depressing use. I have to admit that I am a Lime Access member, meaning that I don’t pay for individual rides of up to 30 minutes, so I have not noticed the per-minute fees.

I was the only public person in attendance in the room. One person spoke on Zoom, but I have not way of knowing if there were more people observing on Zoom. Note that I am a user of the bike share, not of the scooter share, and don’t have much perspective on scooters, I expressed these concerns, which I hope committee will address:

Instability: The unannounced shutdown of the system at the beginning of the pandemic was not the desire of the public, which wanted to continue using the bikes. This type of issue, determined solely on the whims of the operator/owner, is not acceptable to the users, and any new policy must address this issue.
Maintenance: The bikes are not being maintained to an acceptable level of good repair. About 1/4 of the bikes I try to rent are unrideable for various reasons, about 1/4 are rideable but have significant issues, and about 1/2 are more of less OK.
Distribution: The agreement between the operator/owner requires that some bikes be distributed/rebalanced into low income neighborhoods within the service area (many are not in the service area, but some are). My observation, both from being on the streets and checking the app, indicate that this is not being done.
Transit integration: The JUMP bike share system was for a time somewhat integrated with transit. Bike charging stations were located at a number of light rail stations. But when Uber took over the system, these charging stations were removed. So there is no integration at this time. Bike share and transit can complement each other in critical ways, but the current system is operating without that insight. There are a few systems in the country where the transportation/transit agency also operates the bike share system, Los Angeles Metro for example. Though this system is not perfect, the integration is noticeable, and the rental rates are significantly below that of private systems.

Sacramento bike share update

2022/08/03 Dan Allison1 Comment

There are a number of new white and green Lime bikes on the street in Sacramento. There are not the easy-to-steal white and green ones of a few months ago, some of which were promptly stolen and the others quickly pulled from service. Though they still seem to be called Gen 4 bikes, they now have a cable lock very similar to those used on scooters. I have seen more of these bikes downtown/midtown than elsewhere. See photo.

There continue to be red JUMP/Lime bikes on the street. I had the impression that there were fewer of these bikes than there used to be, but it may be that they are just being distributed differently. I’ve seen racks (the old SoBi/JUMP racks) full of these bikes, which had not had more than one or two bikes since the return of bike share. Lime does not make its GBFS (General Bikeshare Feed Specification) available to the public, nor does it have a map of bike share other than in the app, so it is difficult to say whether the bikes are being appropriately distributed/balanced.

While looking to see if there was a web map, I ran across an interesting ArcGIS Story Map from the City of Sacramento, Shared-Rideables in Sacramento. It was created in January 2022, and has not been updated, but is quite interesting.

Lime still seems to be failing to track and pick up dead bikes. By dead, I mean that the battery has run down to the point that it no longer powers the GPS unit, so Lime loses track of where these bike are. Several months ago there were a number of these bikes, reported to both Lime and the city, but not picked up after three weeks. Lime promised to me and to the city to do better. However, recently there were two bikes parked on the pathway from Sacramento Valley Station to the platforms for more than five days. Bike parked anywhere other than in very visible location on the street network do not get picked up for significant periods of time.

I used a Lime bike (white and green) Saturday without incident, returning from a trip. But on my outbound trip, using Lime/JUMP bikes, when I was on a tight schedule, I had no luck finding a bike that worked properly. The first one was stuck in first gear. The second had no pedal assist. The third had a jammed seat post that could not be adjusted. I managed to make the train on time, but barely. The bikes are simply not being maintained as they should be. I have noticed that if I report a problem, though the app, the bike is still there days later, and still rentable by another victim.

When reporting a bike problem, the app provides a limited number of issues (below), and no longer provides a text field for entering detail. The diagram says pedals, but there is no indication here or anywhere whether than means a problem with the pedals or cranks, or means problem with the pedal assist.

Lime app, problem report screen

One feature that was added to the app a few months ago that I really like is that the user can select scooters only, or bikes only, or both, for map display.

The app seems to show whether the bike in question is one of the new white and green ones or the older red Lime/JUMP bikes with the fabric covered locking cable. I’ve said before and will say again that it was a mistake for JUMP to drop the U-bar lock mechanism used on the SoBi and early JUMP bikes. So far as I know, a properly locked bike with U- bar was never was stolen.

JUMP count update 2018-08-04

2018/08/042018/08/04 Dan Allison2 Comments

There are clearly more bikes on the street now than at last count posting, but I’m not sure how many. The rumor was 100 more bikes in this last week, and 100 more in the week before, but so far I’ve not been able to get anyone to confirm or deny those numbers. If true, that would make a total of 500 bikes in the region. Since the total possible is not known, we can’t say what the availability percentage is. When there were 300 bikes possible, the percentage available ranged up to 56%, but I think that staffing is now catching up with demand and the percentage available may be ranging up to 74%.

I am curious about whether there is an industry standard for the availability of bikes. Since I am pretty sure that JUMP has the vast majority of electric assist bikes in service, and none of the electric bike share systems are very old, I have not been able to find any information. It is worth remembering that electric assist bike share did not even exist in 2016, and the NACTO 2017 bike share report does not mention electric assist bikes at all. This report was released May 2018, so the next report is months away. Of the bike share systems, the only ones with electric assist, so far as I know, are JUMP (dock-optional), Motivate (which operates most of the dock systems in the US), and LimeBike (dockless). I have seen a few Ford GoBike (a Motivate system) electrics in SF, but have not had the opportunity yet to ride one.

There are a number of people returning bikes to the drop zone (green) hubs, either for the 50 cent credit or out of the goodness of their hearts, and I think that is helping keep more bikes out on the streets because it makes it easier for JUMP staff to find and load these for West Sacramento to be charged. It is more likely now that hubs will actually have bikes available because charged bikes are being returned to hubs more frequently.

I was out last night returning low battery bikes to hubs (in between beers), and I saw about 80 bikes in use in various parts of the central city. I also saw ‘in repair’ (low battery) bikes being picked up by JUMP staff at the 17th & R drop zone, at about 10:00 at night, so there is real effort now to keep up with charging.

A caveat about all counts: These counts are done by hand by Dan, and Matt who is now helping, and of course they will not be 100% accurate. In fact, in the time it takes to count the bikes in the app, the numbers have changed, particularly at those times of day when a lot of bikes are in motion, commute hours and going out in the evening hours.

2018-08-04 10:00AM

Sacramento: 207 bikes, 94 in hub and 113 out of hub
West Sacramento: 57 bikes, 35 in hub and 22 out of hub
Davis: 50 bikes, 21 in hub and 29 out of hub
Total: 316 bikes

2018-08-02 6:46AM

Sacramento: 248 bikes, 125 in hub and 123 out of hub
West Sacramento: 59 bikes, 29 in hub, 30 out of hub
Davis: 58 bikes, 20 in hub, 38 out of hub
Total: 369 bikes (this is the largest number available that we have seen to date)

2018-07-31 6:22AM

Sacramento: 187 bikes, 94 in hub and 93 out of hub
West Sacramento: 50 bikes, 33 in hub and 17 out of hub
Davis: 67 bikes, 26 in hub and 41 out of hub
Total: 304 bikes

2018-07-30 1:41PM

Sacramento: 108 bikes, 46 in hub and 62 out of hub
West Sacramento: 33 bikes, 23 in hub and 10 out of hub
Davis: 52 bikes, 17 in hub and 35 out of hub
Total: 193 bikes (this afternoon low probably indicates both bikes in motion and ones that are ‘in repair’ low battery)

2018-07-30 6:17AM

Sacramento: 127 bikes, 76 in hub and 51 out of hub
West Sacramento: 32 bikes, 15 in hub and 17 out of hub
Davis: 55 bikes, 21 in hub and 34 out of hub
Total: 215 bikes

2018-07-28 6:30AM

Sacramento: 162 bikes, 62 in hub and 100 out of hub
West Sacramento: 37 bikes, 19 in hub and 18 out of hub
Davis: 30 bikes, 17 in hub and 13 out of hub
Total: 229 bikes

2018-07-27 6:30AM

Sacramento: 155 bikes, 75 in hub and 80 out of hub
West Sacramento: 35 bikes, 16 in hub and 19 out of hub
Davis: 45 bikes, 11 in hub and 34 out of hub
Total: 240 bikes (this is the first count that I think indicates the total bikes are now above 300)

Bike share is booming

2018/06/112021/11/05 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I had a mindset for the last three weeks that the problem with the JUMP system was that bikes were not being used because they were not being charged and re-balanced. But my observations this weekend show that I had things flipped. The system is getting used so much that the bikes are running out of battery. Everywhere I went in the central city, I saw people riding them. I’d see a bike parked, and ten minutes later it was gone, in use by someone else. I don’t know when JUMP will provide rides-per-bike data to the partners, but I think it will indicate that, at least on weekends, each bike is getting many trips per day.

The app map this morning showed almost no bikes in the central city, and what there were were in low-battery status. On my walk, I saw five bikes in very low battery ‘in repair’ status, all within a few blocks of my home. Another had a dead GPS battery, which I think happens when they stay in ‘in repair’ mode for a long time. The bikes are still in the central city, but they are out of juice because they have been used so many times.

Two things users could do to help:

If you find a dead GPS battery bike, with the display blank and the keypad unresponsive, email JUMP at support@jumpbikes.com to let them know the location, street and cross-street. Include that it is in Sacramento, or West Sacramento, or Davis, as the bike numbers alone don’t pin down which city the bike is in.
If your destination is within a block, or perhaps two, of a hub, park at the hub. That not only makes it easier for the next person to find it, but makes it easier for the JUMP field crew to find it, particularly if it eventually goes to dead battery and drops off the system.

No hub or rack near your destination? You can submit location requests to JUMP at the same support@jumpbikes.com email address. There are a number of locations which have been identified for hubs but not yet installed. Some of them in repurposed parking spaces, marked with thick white lines and two delineators. But it doesn’t hurt to submit an already planned location, so go ahead. SACOG has promised a map of future hub locations, but I’ve not seen it. Presumably it will show up on the SACOG Bike Share page: https://www.sacog.org/bike-share.