utgf wrote:At least in the financial district, they were everywhere the first few days until the city confiscated them. And they were being left in places where people could easily trip over them.
Glad the city is passing rules to get them regulated. Would not want to happen here with these what I saw in Dallas with the bicycles during my last visit.
According to my wife, who works in the financial district, apparently there was in fact about a week where there were lots of them, and I just missed it. I don't share your confidence in SF's regulatory decision-making, though.
Dallas bikeshare, on the other hand, is nothing short of miraculous. When I was in Dallas in mid-January, it totally blew me away (and apparently has increased since then), and the initial data is just as impressive. The first six-month ridership compared favorably with ridership for Ford GoBike (Bay Area Bike Share) four years into the program (plus multi-year prior planning process!). And that's with the first two months of Dallas' barely having any bikes and the months after it had real lift-off being in the winter. All this despite Dallas having essentially zero bike infrastructure, no biking culture, hostile roads that are too wide and fast to share, and land use that's very spread out.
The City's hands-off regulatory approach is the first time I've been genuinely impressed with Dallas leadership. It's what allowed this exceptional performance. They wisely recognized that the worst that could happen was a little clutter, and they could deal with regulations to address that after the program had gotten off the ground, rather than feel the need to get everything exactly perfect from the start (which is impossible, particularly with something new like this) and risk suffocating it at birth. The City spent next to no money, time, or effort, and in exchange got an extensive bikeshare system with promising early ridership in a place totally hostile to non-auto transport. That's a job well done!