Editorial
Boston Globe
May 26, 2018

Whatever happened to something being as easy as riding a bicycle?

What started out as a simple idea — kiosks at key locations in urban areas
offering bicycles for rent by the hour or less — has morphed into a free-for-all
pitting bike-share upstarts against established giants and municipalities
dictating which company can operate where. Add to that the actions of bike
renters, who may innocently take a bike outside of its jurisdiction or not-soinnocently
leave it on the sidewalk as a hazard to pedestrians and those with
disabilities.

Still, it’s a good concept. Anything that takes a car off the road in congested
metro areas like Boston is welcome, and that concept is at work in cities
worldwide. Boston’s began as Hubway in 2011. Expanded to Cambridge,
Somerville, and Brookline, it was renamed Blue Bikes in April, sponsored by
Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and charges $2.50 for 30 minutes or a year of
unlimited 45-minute rides for $99.

Yet with innovation comes the inevitable disruptor. A refinement freeing the
bikes from their docks, which started in China, became widespread in the US
last year. With an app, users can now find a nearby dockless bike and drop it
off wherever they want. The technology can also lock the back wheel to
inhibit theft.

“Wherever users want” doesn’t necessarily match the maps government
officials had in mind after striking exclusive deals with companies to run
docked-bike services. In the Blue Bikes areas, that’s meant hostility toward
suburban dockless upstarts when their wayward bikes end up in the four
communities. The sidewalk hazard is also an issue, which some dockless
companies address with strict parking rules. The bike-share wars also mean
zero cooperation between competing entities, frustrating users who might
want to ride a Blue Bike to South Station, board the Red Line, and pick up an
out-of-network Ofo bike in Quincy. Doing so means downloading multiple
apps and extra sign-ups and credit-card checks.

That may sound like a classic First World problem, but the scenario is real in
transit planning, known as the “last mile” dilemma: getting people to specific
destinations beyond the main routes.

A positive development comes from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council,
which helped facilitate the original Hubway deal and last month delivered
another. Dockless bikes from two companies, LimeBike and Spin, will now be
available for $1 for the first 30 minutes in 15 communities (Arlington,
Bedford, Belmont, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Milton,
Needham, Newton, Revere, Waltham, Watertown, and Winthrop). With
many of those adjacent to one another, it’s good news for riders — except
when they hit the Blue Bikes boundaries, where the bikes aren’t allowed to be
parked.

So can the bike-share entities learn to share — their geography, if not their
apps?

They have elsewhere. In Washington, D.C., the city’s Capital Bikeshare is
managed by Motivate, the same company that runs the Blue Bikes operation.
The agreement allows for a trial run of dockless bike operators that so far has
seen no appreciative drop-off in Capital Bikeshare use, according to the
District of Columbia’s bikeshare manager. Motivate also operates San
Francisco’s Ford GoBike program, which users can access using a Clipper
card, the Bay Area’s version of the T’s CharlieCard.

For their part, Blue Bikes officials describe their program as a transit system
owned by the four participating municipalities. That’s fine, except there
already is a transit agency in Eastern Massachusetts: It’s called the MBTA,
and the idea is to serve the entire region. And like San Francisco’s Clipper
card, the T’s new fare collection system, which is being designed to accept
everything from CharlieCards to smartphones, may hold the ultimate answer
to seamless travel between buses, trains, and bikes.

In the meantime, can we bike without the bickering? Bike-share companies
banking on attracting venture capitalists by eating a competitor’s lunch
would better assure their viability by providing a seamless experience for
their customers. And government entities that have contracts creating
artificial monopolies should consider whether those boundaries are in the
best interests of consumers.

All of which would make riding a bike, or at least renting one for an hour,
easy again — and far less confusing.