I hope we can find a sustainable model with these bikes. They are really useful in the cities they're in. I've used them in the UK in London and Bristol, and it really feels rather magical when you stumble across a bike, realise it's by far the fastest way to get where you're going, and within minutes you're riding off.
Perhaps the solution is a hybrid of the fixed dock cycle schemes which are really capital intensive to install, and these completely free-floating schemes. Maybe some docks with only RFID chips and no active electronics. Make the docks steel frames which are just bolted to the ground rather than cast in concrete, and maybe installation is affordable.
Krakow has a hybrid system like this which seems to work well. The docks are just dumb metal, and the bike has u-lock with which you can equally well lock it to a street sign.
Locking a bike anywhere away from a dock costs you a little extra, and there is a bounty for rescuing such bikes... but most of them live at the docks, so you know where to go to get one. If the dock is full you can lock it anywhere nearby too.
There exist quite a few attempts at this and most work pretty well in my experience:
- Publibike in Switzerland (publibike.ch) operates your idea of cheaper docks: they are just a metal sign next to parking space with some (bluetooth-like) electronics in them to communicate with the bikes. You can only return your bike at one of these parking spaces. At the same time, they avoid the cost of installing fixed docks for each bike. They had some problems with their locks on the bikes not working properly, but these seem to be resolved and otherwise they work really well IMO.
- INDIGO weel (https://www.indigoweel.com/) is a free-floating system, but not totally free floating: you can only return your bike in GPS-fenced "allowed areas", which should be bike parking spots, avoiding the chaos of completely free-floating bikes. As GPS fences are quite broad, this doesn't work perfectly but it helps. Some of the schemes operated by Nextbike in Germany also work like that (they also operate with fixed docks in some cities, though).
I prefer these dock- or semi-dock-based systems to the totally free-floating ones, as if you know where the docks are its much easier and more reliable to actually find a bike there. Especially if you are travelling in a group, it will be a challenge to "collect" enough bikes with a free-floating system (unless you have so many bikes standing around on the streets that they become a public nuisance).
Nevertheless, I do not think judging free-floating systems by oBike is a good idea: oBike was uniquely bad in many respects (the quality of the bikes, the lack of local staff and support, the lack of GPS on the bikes, the need for a deposit etc.) and other free-floating schemes such as Limebike seem to work quite well.
The docks, here in Helsinki, are integrated well with the bus & tram API/app. That means you can see how many bikes are sat at each dock-point around the city, in real-time, which is pretty good.
The main problem with bike sharing schemes is that there are too many competitors, none of which has enough bikes to actually be useful. Few people are willing to sign up with five different companies and deal with five different ways to unlock the bikes.
If they somehow found a way to work together, grant mutual access to the networks, then it might work. Otherwise, you'll need a massive investment into bikes to get critical mass, and cities often increase that problem by only allowing each company to deploy a few hundred bikes.
Also, as the article points out, those locks... I've yet to see an electronic lock that would actually work reliably, and for the bike sharing scheme I use, I feel like the ride works well (e-bike present, unlocks on first attempt, battery is charged) about 50% of the time, ignoring a stretch of my commute (to/from the public transit stop) where I know there will be no bikes available at the time I'll be going.
The actual solution here is for municipal transport companies to get involved - e.g. there’s a brand new bike scheme in Edinburgh that was set up by the council-owned bus company and run by Serco under a concession. The bikes are really quite nice - there’s docks all over the city centre and clearly marked spots where you can use the integrated lock to leave them where a dock can’t be installed, they’re quite sturdy and easy to use, and handle the hills quite well. There’s rumours that electric assist bikes are being brought in too. I handed in my bus pass and bought a bike pass (for a savings of a few hundred pounds) within the first week.
I handed in my bus pass and bought a bike pass (for a savings of a few hundred pounds) within the first week.
Why didn't you just buy a bike with the savings? It's probably much better quality, a much nicer riding experience and -as you describe your transit needs - would pay for itself in no time.
Because I don’t have space to keep a bike in my apartment. It also means I can cycle somewhere and take the bus back, or vice versa, when needed - that’s my partner’s commute, a bus into work in the morning and a cycle back from the dock outside her work to the virtual dock at the end of our street in the evening.
Perhaps the solution is a hybrid of the fixed dock cycle schemes which are really capital intensive to install, and these completely free-floating schemes. Maybe some docks with only RFID chips and no active electronics. Make the docks steel frames which are just bolted to the ground rather than cast in concrete, and maybe installation is affordable.