The Chainlink

I'd be interested to hear about new stations as they pop up.

I was excited to find a new station only 2 blocks from my house last night (a block closer than the planned location):

Views: 4516

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

OK, you'd think I'd be able to find this info on the site.....

1) The annual membership is a rolling, not calendar year, right? Absolutely no reference on the site.

2) Once I sign up, can I really not use it until I receive my key? They can't send me some fort of temporary code to enter?

3) I much prefer using virtual credit cards for online transactions. I don't intend to incur any overage fees, but others have noted that sometimes dockings aren't recorded properly.... what happens if they try to record an overage fee on an "expired" credit card? Do you get locked out of the system immediately?

1) Your membership year expires exactly 365 days after the first time you use your key.  I had my key in hand almost a month before using it, as there weren't more than 20 stations or so back in early June, so I "extended" my membership to next July, as the system grew and became useful to me.

2) Call customer service.  I've heard that they sometimes (always?) give a free daily pass or two to folks waiting for their keys to arrive.  Don't know if they then start the clock on your year before you get your key, though that would seem fair to me.

3) I know nothing about virtual vs. real credit cards.  My guess is that if the credit card account you supply doesn't have enough credit limit (or accountability or expiration date) to cover a potential $1200 bike loss, they wouldn't accept it.  If your credit card is hinky, for the good of the Divvy system and for all of the rest of us, I would hope you'd get locked out or booted off immediately.  Paris experienced huge losses with its Velib' system at the beginning, with ne'er-do-wells tossing  bikes into the river, riding them down staircases until they didn't roll anymore, even selling them on the black market in North Africa.  Parisians weren't held responsible for the bikes they borrowed.  Bike share systems everywhere, including Divvy, have tried to avoid this by attaching some financial personal responsibility to members.  They don't ask you to post a $1200 cash bond up front because they know your credit card will cover losses.  If a lot of Divvy yearly members used virtual credit cards that miraculously evaporated whenever a charge was due, I'd think the system would collapse.

Most recent station installations, to the best of my knowledge:

On Friday, as you noted, 24th & Western.  Also this past Friday, seven more:

35th & Wallace

35th & Halsted

31st & Morgan

Halsted & Maxwell Street

Franklin & Monroe

Grand & Wood

Armitage & Larrabee

 

Yesterday (Saturday), five more:

LaSalle & Jackson

Jackson & Michigan

Franklin & Quincy

Wells & Eugenie

Wells & Evergreen

Would have been six, but a street fair in Old Town kept us away from Burton Place & Wells.  We'll get that another day.

 

Double thanks. Tom!

I've built a web application that grabs data from Divvy's API at http://viddy.gensym.org. The front page lists the 10 most recently added stations. I'm thinking of adding an RSS feed of station additions/changes if there's any demand for it.

Spotted a new one at North & California. That's the one I've been waiting for!

Nice work, David!

David Altenburg said:

I've built a web application that grabs data from Divvy's API at http://viddy.gensym.org/. The front page lists the 10 most recently added stations. I'm thinking of adding an RSS feed of station additions/changes if there's any demand for it.

This is great, thanks!

That RSS feed would look mighty nice somewhere on thechainlink home page IMO.

David Altenburg said:

I've built a web application that grabs data from Divvy's API at http://viddy.gensym.org. The front page lists the 10 most recently added stations. I'm thinking of adding an RSS feed of station additions/changes if there's any demand for it.

I'm in.  The confirmation e-mail is a little spartan, but I'm sure almost everyone reading knows that already... no trouble with Virtual Account #.  Will probably be prompted to update it when expiration nears as on Chicago Card and similar sites.

Thunder Snow said:

1) Your membership year expires exactly 365 days after the first time you use your key.  I had my key in hand almost a month before using it, as there weren't more than 20 stations or so back in early June, so I "extended" my membership to next July, as the system grew and became useful to me.

2) Call customer service.  I've heard that they sometimes (always?) give a free daily pass or two to folks waiting for their keys to arrive.  Don't know if they then start the clock on your year before you get your key, though that would seem fair to me.

3) I know nothing about virtual vs. real credit cards.  My guess is that if the credit card account you supply doesn't have enough credit limit (or accountability or expiration date) to cover a potential $1200 bike loss, they wouldn't accept it.  If your credit card is hinky, for the good of the Divvy system and for all of the rest of us, I would hope you'd get locked out or booted off immediately.  Paris experienced huge losses with its Velib' system at the beginning, with ne'er-do-wells tossing  bikes into the river, riding them down staircases until they didn't roll anymore, even selling them on the black market in North Africa.  Parisians weren't held responsible for the bikes they borrowed.  Bike share systems everywhere, including Divvy, have tried to avoid this by attaching some financial personal responsibility to members.  They don't ask you to post a $1200 cash bond up front because they know your credit card will cover losses.  If a lot of Divvy yearly members used virtual credit cards that miraculously evaporated whenever a charge was due, I'd think the system would collapse.

Nice!

The amount of data coming out of Divvy's APIs is amazing. It just waiting for smart developers like yourself to package into usable info.

David Altenburg said:

I've built a web application that grabs data from Divvy's API at http://viddy.gensym.org. The front page lists the 10 most recently added stations. I'm thinking of adding an RSS feed of station additions/changes if there's any demand for it.

I want an app that tracks #divvyred!

But first I want one that tracks how active the various stations are... I guess by how often the number of bikes changes.

h' 1.0 said:

But first I want one that tracks how active the various stations are... I guess by how often the number of bikes changes.


Yeah, that's what I'm most interested in. If you click on the stations in my app, you'll notice that it graphs the changes in bikes/docks for the stations. I plan to next (after doing some work to speed up the site) add some aggregation of that data so that we can get some idea of station activity. Unfortunately, rebalancing (where Divvy bikes are loaded from one station into a van to be moved to another station) adds a lot of noise to that data, so I'd really love to see the API provide actual arrival/departure information so that I can use that rather than try to infer it. 

RSS

© 2008-2016   The Chainlink Community, L.L.C.   Powered by

Disclaimer  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service