PBSC can be pretty difficult to deal with. If you work with them, be sure to read the contract carefully and negotiate to purchase non-proprietory parts from outside vendors. Also , work in something about parts quality, timely shipping, etc. The bikes are generally made by Devinci. The bikes are built like tanks and mostly easy to work on. Not great to ride for long periods, but that's the point. Easy for anyone to ride. Their software tends to be buggy and customer support is meh. PBSC is also Shift, which manages a couple of bike share systems. A lot of the larger shares are run like factories. You may want to look into that.
B-Cycle is making a good mark in smaller US cities.
You can also read how Baltimore has had large theft problems.
There's a French company making decent bike share bicycles. I'll see if I can find there contact info.
Portland is experimenting with a different locking system that doesn't require so much software and hardware like NYC and Chicago.
Rebalancing and logistics is another part to consider. Making sure the bikes are available evenly around campus is important and takes a little planning on how to execute.
Having bike share in Chicago has put more cyclists on the road, made cyclists out of people who might not have regularly ridden, increase commerce, and has been a boon to Chicago, where I live.
Something like this might be more in line with your needs. https://www.fastcompany.com/3068900/this-new-stationless-bike-share-system-l...
I worked at Chicago's Bike Share for 3 years, starting at the beginning. Feel free to email me directly with any questions and I'll do my best to answer.
Cheers
Rob
On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 7:15 PM, David Oliver nowhere3@gmail.com wrote:
https://www.pbsc.com is the originator of most of the systems you will see in North America.
Zagster seems like an alright copy but I would worry about the exposed rear derailleurs on their bikes.
Everyone in the entire world is launching systems like https://www.limebike.com or https://dropbike.ca right now. I’ve heard reports that factories in China are churning out tens of millions of these bikes every year.
A couple things I would say about systems like Lime Bike or Dropbike:
The bikes are cheap and mostly pretty shitty to ride for more than 15 minutes. They have a tendency to be stolen/vandalised. Here’s a story about one in China losing 90% of its fleet in 6 months: http://www.bbc.com/ news/business-40351409 Because they are so cheap they are really unsustainable. Most of the companies running these types of systems don’t repair their bikes because it doesn’t make financial sense.
You can read about more systems on Wikipedia: https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle-sharing_system
On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 5:00 PM, Tigre Bici bici.uanl@gmail.com wrote:
Hello everyone! It seems our university finally got the idea on making a bicycle sharing program within campus premises. We are investigating which are the best/cheaper ones to launch it soon. We have seen the zagster and the bike docks that are unlock via a smartphone. We dont have much information only that they want it to be automatic and with aprox 70 bikes for starter.
Do you know any systems that are available outside the US?
Thanks in advance
R.
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