Last month – and yes, reader, I do mean last month, as in February 2019 – the bike share once known as Hubway ran a month-long promotion to encourage and reward winter riding. The promotion awarded increasingly more valuable prizes as riders met certain total ride thresholds for the month.
Here’s the full list of prizes:
1 ride – rider meetup invitation
5 rides – exclusive digital badge
10 rides – Bluebikes sunglasses
25 rides – Bluebikes hand warmers or touch-screen gloves
55 rides – One-month membership extension or Bluebikes helmet
The promotion sounded pretty cool to me but as always I found myself getting wrapped up in the details as soon as I gave greater consideration to the above list. What were they thinking at Hubway HQ – excuse me, Bluebikes – when they determined this setup? Let’s do a quick prize breakdown to make my point.
1 ride – rider meetup invitation
After completing my first ride, I was sent a free ticket for a rider meetup event. This is where I was supposed to go pick up my physical prize as well as ‘meet up’ with other frozen riders. At time of writing, this event is happening tomorrow.
I’m not sure what to expect and I have no idea about the cash value of showing up. However, it is a free ticket into a Harvard Square bar and sometimes such a thing costs a few dollars. The event starts at 5 PM which is early for a full bar cover, though, so let’s take that into consideration.
Value: $3
5 rides – exclusive digital badge
I actually don’t know what this means. Maybe I can tweet this?
Value: ???
10 rides – Bluebikes sunglasses
Sunglasses technically cost money but an enterprising city dweller can usually accumulate enough shades just from taking advantage of free handouts. My guess is that these giveaway glasses are at the cheapest end of the scale. The lowest price I’ve ever seen for sunglasses in Boston is around $5.
Value: $5
25 rides – Bluebikes hand warmers or touch-screen gloves
As we approach the summit of the prize distribution, we come to our first option. I understand hand warmers are pretty cheap these days – I’ve seen some in stores for as little as twenty-five cents per warmer. The touch-screen gloves sound expensive but like with sunglasses anyone willing to do a little shopping around can find a cheap pair – based on a quick internet search, it seems like these cost around five dollars.
Value: $5 (for ten hand warmers or touch-screen gloves)
55 rides – One-month membership extension or Bluebikes helmet
The grand prize is a FREE month of Hubway – excuse me, Bluebikes – or a protective billboard you can wear on your head advertising Blue Cross Blue Shield, a company that profits whenever you and I cannot pay for our healthcare. I’m somewhat controversially helmet free at the moment but it feels like this chapter of my life will come to an end tomorrow. It’s not like Hubway – er, sorry, Bluebikes – is making this a difficult choice, though. The last time I checked the annual membership runs at $100 so the one-month extension has a value of less than $10. I think I’ve seen the cheapest bike helmet at around $25 but my bet is the official company helmet is a little more valuable – Bluebikes is a bike share financed by a health insurance payer and my hunch is that such an organization would invest beyond the barebones in their helmet.
Value: $8.33 (membership extension) or $50 (helmet)
The inescapable fact of these prizes is that the values don’t always increase as a rider accumulates more trips. The membership extension, for example, is less valuable than the touch-screen gloves. Plus, I think it’s highly likely that most riders who reach the 55+ ride plateau in February already own a helmet – my hunch is that the popular choice among this group will be the relatively less valuable membership extension. The prize structure is a little odd from the value perspective and it makes me wonder how committed Bluebikes was to actually increasing rides across the system in February. Surely, no one was so motivated by the prospect of an $8 prize to take two trips per day during the coldest month of the year.
If I think about it from the perspective of Hubway HQ – whoops, I mean Bluebikes – a token attempt to increase rides that has no true effect probably isn’t a terrible thing. It’s not like biking gets any easier in the winter and I’m sure the last thing Bluebikes needs is an injury resulting from a rider’s attempt to win some kind of ride accumulation prize. More importantly, as we all were just reminded once more it’s still OK to hit and kill cyclists in Boston. February might be a good time to encourage people to take a break rather than organizing a promotion with a grand prize that appeases speeding, distracted, or reckless victim blamers who think checking blind spots is their mechanic’s job.
Or, maybe Bluebikes can just stop throwing parties for itself and instead invest their resources into helping its member cities improve their cycling infrastructures. A can of green paint would go a long way to improve safety in countless local intersections. Maybe next February, Bluebikes can offer to paint a new bike lane for every member who rides 55+ times. I’m all for it, at least – I’d much prefer to paint the street green today than paint a ghost bike white tomorrow.
