Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

Hot off the bike share failure, Mayor Mike Rawlings questioned specifics that weren’t offered in advance of the bikes descending on Dallas en masse, according to D Magazine’s reporting of the city council meeting. He wanted to know how many robotic delivery carts will be unleashed on Dallas streets and what restrictions will be placed on their travel. According to Department of Transportation Director Michael Rogers, the bots will be limited to a one-mile radius, they’ll top out at five miles an hour, and will have an actual human being accompany them during the pilot program.

Dallas’ robot delivery pilot limits each participating company to 20 robots. For now, it’s just Marble, but imagine the potential for disaster if each food service business in Deep Ellum had a fleet of 20 bots, especially with the hoards of pedestrians trying to get around on foot, or now, scooters. Apparently Arlington is also in talks with Marble. This idea has been controversial in other U.S. cities: tech-friendly San Francisco debated banning food delivery robots altogether.

The company will unleash its delivery bots in Dallas on November 1 for a six-month trial. Stay tuned for how this all plays out.

https://dallas.eater.com/2018/10/18/179 ... W0dxpcTIIA

Despite the extremely negative tone of the article, I'm actually really excited to hear this is being piloted in Dallas. I have no idea how this will play out, but I like that they have only committed to a 6-month pilot, and they are being pretty conservative to start with. In addition, each robot will be monitored by a human, so I honestly don't get why the author of the article is trying to scare us into thinking this is bike-share 2.0 for Dallas.

For the record, I didn't have a problem with the bike share in Dallas either. Sure it wasn't perfect, but I like to see new ideas and technologies being tested out in Dallas, and I would hate for us to dismiss them immediately without giving it a chance. They might not all be winners, but eventually we find a way to make it work.

They better have some martian Lunar Rover suspensions for the amount of potholes in these streets.

The only 'failure' related to bike share, was when the city stepped in. It's just a matter of time before they kill off the next innovative thing.

muncien wrote:The only 'failure' related to bike share, was when the city stepped in. It's just a matter of time before they kill off the next innovative thing.

I agree with this. Honestly, I feel like the market would have sorted out the bike mess on its own. It would have taken longer, but, in the end, there is no way all 4-5 of those companies would have kept thousands of bikes in DFW. Eventually some would drop out, and others would reduce numbers.

I'm not too bitter about the bikes mostly leaving, because we ended up with the scooters which seem to be doing well, and people seem to love.

I have no doubt that the city's fees were the final nail in the coffin for bikes, but they were failing well before that. As soon as they became ubiquitous in tent cities and nobody cared when someone broke the locking mechanism, these became "free bikes" and nobody was willing to pay for them.

Looking forward to seeing a delivery robot try to navigate the sidewalks downtown.