The Chainlink

1. Walk from work to grocery store (carrying helmet) because Divvy station near work is empty.

2. Arriving at grocery store, see that Divvy station there, too, is empty.

3. Exiting grocery store, see someone docking their Divvy and heading in to buy groceries.

4. Take the Divvy and ride home.

Jerk move? I did that last night. :/

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As far as I understand the Divvy contract, no.

No, if you'd walked up 30 seconds later, you wouldn't have seen the other rider, and you'd have been thanking the Divvy gods for giving you the last bike.  For all you know, another rider dropped off a bike a minute later, or the Divvy re-balancing van showed up right after you left.  That's just how it works.

I do, however, have some beefs with the City for spreading the stations too thin for the sake of coverage at the expense of dependability and with Divvy for not being more timely with rebalancing.

Agree. Started out this year worse than last, and seems to have dropped off even more in the last few weeks.  I've been reporting my local problems constantly and nothing changes. Although I wouldn't attribute it necessarily to "spreading too thin"-- there are lots of places around town with a ridiculous concentration of stations that could be redistributed to cover a larger area comfortably.

BruceBikes said:

I do, however, have some beefs with the City for spreading the stations too thin for the sake of coverage at the expense of dependability and with Divvy for not being more timely with rebalancing.

h'- Do you think they should encourage longer distances by spreading out station coverage and also increasing the ride time, as in NYC? I've wondered this since the beginning and am curious as to your opinion.

h' 1.0 said:

Agree. Started out this year worse than last, and seems to have dropped off even more in the last few weeks.  I've been reporting my local problems constantly and nothing changes. Although I wouldn't attribute it necessarily to "spreading too thin"-- there are lots of places around town with a ridiculous concentration of stations that could be redistributed to cover a larger area comfortably.

BruceBikes said:

I do, however, have some beefs with the City for spreading the stations too thin for the sake of coverage at the expense of dependability and with Divvy for not being more timely with rebalancing.

The coverage wouldn't be quite so thin if they built the new stations this year as planned... 

With respect to "spreading too thin", I'm thinking mostly of the downtown area.  At rush hour, the current density of the system doesn't come close to meeting demand.  Even as late as 7 p.m., I've seen completely empty stations.  For most people leaving around 5-6 p.m., you can forget about using Divvy.

Riding the bus (as a comparison) can be slow, but you can usually be confident it'll be there when you want to use it.  I can't say the same of Divvy as a public transportation option for now.

h' 1.0 said:

 I wouldn't attribute it necessarily to "spreading too thin"-- there are lots of places around town with a ridiculous concentration of stations that could be redistributed to cover a larger area comfortably.

Living just beyond the edge of the coverage area, I absolutely think this is what should happen.

They need to admit that the rollout didn't go as planned and they need to rethink some of the prior decisions.

It doesn't need to be a sweeping distribution.  Just a few stations from dense areas placed to bridge outlying stations to each-other. Example-- one at Western and the Forest Park Blue Line, or at Western and Madison, would enable travel from Division and Western to 21st and Western without racing against the clock.


 
Fran Kondorf said:

h'- Do you think they should encourage longer distances by spreading out station coverage and also increasing the ride time, as in NYC? I've wondered this since the beginning and am curious as to your opinion.

h' 1.0 said:

Agree. Started out this year worse than last, and seems to have dropped off even more in the last few weeks.  I've been reporting my local problems constantly and nothing changes. Although I wouldn't attribute it necessarily to "spreading too thin"-- there are lots of places around town with a ridiculous concentration of stations that could be redistributed to cover a larger area comfortably.

BruceBikes said:

I do, however, have some beefs with the City for spreading the stations too thin for the sake of coverage at the expense of dependability and with Divvy for not being more timely with rebalancing.

Again, though, I don't know specifically that the coverage area is the reason for the dropoff in maintenance and rebalancing. They may just be taking a page from the CTA and trying to play it as an expansion while cutting back on staff and service.

Not even a little bit of a jerk move, that is what they are there for an how they work.  Divvy is a gamble when it comes to if there will or won't be a bike there for you.

It's also a good demonstration of why it's better to just have your own bike...

I know i've been a bit jerky to some new/tourist divvy users.  There was 1 bike and 5 people trying to figure out how to put the credit card in the kiosk so I helped their decision by walking up sticking in key fob and walking off with the last bike.  While it was slightly douche I did look down the street before i did that and saw a Divvy van heading that way.

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