Originally Posted by
WVU_Engineer
I went to the citibike website, that is pretty cool. I managed to find a station on street view, most of the slots were empty so I guess that means that stations bikes were almost all checked out, but assume there are more slots than bikes at all the stations.
Yes, though I don't know the specifics, there are more slots than bikes. There would have to be or there'd be a city wide game of musical chairs every night as the last few people with bikes had to find them a home. Even with the excess capacity, the bikes tend to clump up in various places and Citibike had crews doing nothing but redistributing the rolling stock.
But the system works, and is viable. All we need is to get past some of the political hurdles so it can move on.
BTW- the technology continues to evolve. Other cities are adopting "dockless" systems where the bikes self lock, and can be left anywhere. They announce their availability using GPS and a cell phone app.