As I mentioned in the July newsletter, the bike share program formerly known as Hubway introduced a rewards program to encourage members to balance the bike distribution across the system. The simple explanation of how this works is that riders will score points for completing trips that start from a full rack and end at an empty rack. These points can then be redeemed for prizes like memberships, gift cards, and whatever else.
As I also mentioned in the July newsletter, this ‘Bike Angels’ program is a carbon copy of an idea I mentioned to them in one of their annual member surveys. Maybe one day I’ll sit here and demand some credit but for now I’m just pleased to learn that not everything I write on the internet disappears unread down some URL-lined black hole!
Of course, there is another reason I gave my idea no thought since I brought it up in that survey – the idea isn’t very good. Sure, having members move a bike here or there can’t hurt, but let’s be blunt, reader, this idea is a treatment rather than a cure. People like me who use Hubway - excuse me, Blue Bikes - as a substitute for bike ownership create the problem of unbalanced racks because at the end of the day (literally) we need a place to leave our bikes while we aren’t biking. This means bikes are always going to pile up wherever we go – at work or recreational areas during afternoons and living areas during the evening.
To put it another way, the unbalanced rack problem is caused by the very activity encouraged by the program – riding a bike from a high-density area to a low-density area. The very act shifts the problem because a low-density area becomes a high-density area merely by biking into it (just like a high-density area becomes a low-density area by biking out of it). And since I assume Hubway – eh hem, Blue Bikes – generally attracts similar types of riders, I assume what one person does during rush hour is what one hundred other people are likely to do as well.
On the plus side, this ‘Bike Angels’ idea is all upside. It can’t hurt to give it a try and see the results, right? But in the first week since the rollout of the plan I’ve had two cases where I couldn’t dock a bike due to a full rack. Bike gods, will you send thee angels? (And in the meantime, let’s hope the business bros over at Blue Bikes HQ aren’t patting themselves on the back, congratulating each other on solving the problem of unbalanced racks!)
The real solution is going to come from better design of the overall system. Yes, reader, I know you are glad I cleared this up, but that’s the answer, and probably the only one. This is an admittedly boring solution that no one can write an excited press release about. However, I think it is the only one sure to work over the long term. There are two common problems in the bike share system that the ‘Bike Angles’ program addresses – too few racks or too few bikes. The solution would need to address these problems directly through improved anticipation of rider demand during busy hours and continued vigilance about balancing racks according to historic rider usage patterns during off hours.
That’s the solution to the problem. It isn’t easy and it isn’t sexy but this is the truth of solving most chronic problems – we generally know what to do, recognize it will be tough, and look for ‘low-hanging fruit’ that will fix everything in one fell swoop. Well, for every real-life example of a silver bullet solution, there are probably a thousand other examples of problems that were not adequately solved the first time around, so I’m confident in saying that this time next year I’ll still be biking around town late at night, looking in vain for a place to store my bike after discovering the first two racks I tried were full.
The overall pattern seen here is fairly common in complex problem solving – the easy to implement, ‘all upside’ solution gets the attention while distracting casual observers from how little is being done to address the core issues. ‘All upside’ solutions are probably a good idea when nobody involved has any clue about the core issue. In those instances where the root cause is obvious, though, I’d like to see more effort made to come up with durable changes intended to resolve a systemic issue for good by directly attacking the root cause of the problem.
Footnotes / endnote / sometimes, these are good, but other times…
0. A colorful analogy?
The ‘Bike Angels’ rewards program is like requiring all public beaches to dispense free sunscreen – the idea can only help but if people want to protect their skin then the solution isn’t to lather up in subsidized SPF, the solution is to go home and sit in the shade. But I guess since the equivalent of sitting in the shade for a bike share isn’t very good – it would mean not biking, which is the exact opposite of what Blue Bikes wants its members to do – then maybe this isn’t the best analogy in TOA history...
Oh well.
But then again, beaches do remain popular at time of writing despite what we all know about skin cancer, so… well…
Never mind, I’m going for a bike ride.
