Most people here just leave them on the corner. Each corner is large enough to set a bike without blocking access to the disabled ramp. They're also more visible on corners for possible users.

I wonder if "no bike/scooter parking" signs will start appearing in areas with dockless sharing. Probably the bikes/scooters will have stickers on them advising how to contact the company in cases where the vehicles become a nuisance. I've read that the companies are already going around picking them up at night and putting them back in convenient pickup locations for the next day. I guess they have to pick them up to charge them if they're electric anyway.

With share bikes there should be a simple procedure for texting when they are parked inconveniently. Gradually users and the company will probably evolve a set of practices that prevent nuisance and inconvenience for everyone.

More than likely, bankruptcy or the venture capitalists looking for the next new thing after taking another financial bath chasing after unlikely unicorns will resolve the issue sooner rather than later.

I don't know if you should be so, "negative" about this. I think it could be a great opportunity for at least two of the posters here. A way to put feet to their desires. No matter how much others have objected some are sure it will work. If they have that confidence that people and municipalities will help their business model there is a perfect chance to make money and prove the naysayers wrong. The concept of money and mouth come to mind. People seem to be getting more considerate every day, maybe they will start parking their park anywhere bikes where they are easy to find and walk the last mile to the remote places they are parking them now. Or Not.

They could probably make more money by selling buy-one-get-two-free deals on SUVs, right? When that kind of money is low-hanging fruit, why piddle around with ride-share change, eh?

Thank you for once again proving that constant negativity against LCF is not sufficient to get you banned from the forum. Do you ever even get infractions? You must be related to the forum owner or something.

Guidelines and Rules or Site Operation: All Members Read, Please

Nobody is making money in the U.S. operating bicycle so-called "ride share". Except for selling the companies to money burning operations like Uber and Lyft.

Someone, anyone, who was interested in actually making money from operations would do better selling lemonade on a street corner.

The biggest problem with dockless shared bikes is oversupply, combined with little or no user accountability.

Too many get dumped in popular locations, or worse, they get replaced without any concern for the existing bikes.

In Shanghai, there are far fewer rental bikes now, compared to a year ago, mostly because there were regulations put in place limiting the amount of bikes any company can put on the streets at any given time.

Maintenance is still non-existent, companies here prefer to replace than repair.

The user data is quite profitable, the rental service is a loss leader.

Maybe you didn't catch the deeper meaning of my sarcasm regarding buy-one-get-two-free deal on SUVs, so I will break it down for you:

You say bike/scooter sharing are not profitable enough to be interesting, but consider the opposite, i.e. overproducing (large) motor-vehicles and promoting excessive sales, which generates demand for more parking, pavement, fuel, insurance, etc. etc. You can give away liability and expense and if people fall for it, they end up with debts and liabilities that make a lot of money for businesses, but they've added to their own misery and the world's.

Now you come up with a solution, which is being able to have a bike or scooter available for short (last mile) trips, which facilitates use of more efficient transit to reduce congestion and make the world a nicer place to live and get around in; but it doesn't seem immediately as profitable as solving the last mile problem by selling everyone an SUV with no other option besides walking for miles. So here is a perfect opportunity for a cynic like you to say that this extremely convenient and efficient (not to mention environmentally friendly) form of transportation will die because investors won't be impressed enough by the earnings potential, but the question is do you really want to see it die and if not, why do you only express cynicism and negativity, and if you hope to see LCF crushed in as many ways as possible by market forces or whatever, why do you hang out in an LCF forum except to discourage people who value LCF and want to see it grow?

I presume you are referring to profitable bicycle "sharing" operations in China, not North America.

Attaching the label/moniker "LCF" to business schemes, ideas, dreams or concepts does not make them LCF issues or topics, just because a zealot thinks anything/everything he thinks about is an LCF issue and his every proposal and postulate on the subject must be agreed with by every person who posts on this list.

Speaking/posting truth/reality to proposed business schemes, ideas, dreams or concepts is all about constructive discussion.

Ok, so what does the future of LCF look like from your personal window on realism? Is there bike/scooter-sharing? Is it dockless or docked? Is there transit? ride-sharing? Are there autonomous vehicles? Are there bike lanes? Is it popular or is it a few rogues who brave non-conformism in a perpetually automotive-conformist society? Does it gradually fade away and disappear into nothing more than a strange blip on the historical radar, mostly devoid of anyone remembering it as even having existed? Does it re-emerge from time to time as people wake up and question the automotive paradigm?

I do not choose to join a rouge or two down the rabbit hole of strange blips of bizarre postulates about the future of so-called "LCF" (whatever that means to a so-called critical thinking rogue).

Then why do you go down the rabbit hole of imagining investors in dockless bike/scooter shares will move on? Why can't you expand that negative vision into a broader one about how the car-free lifestyle will look with and without all the possible amenities that are being developed, marketed, and attacked?

No chance of it spreading to small towns, not sufficiently profitable.. , so 'everywhere' is a generalization
projected from a big city dweller's perspective..

I don't see why not. When they are producing and maintaining so many share bikes and scooters, the cost per bike/scooter cannot be that high. Granted they would have to have someone in the town willing to maintain the bikes/scooters, go around picking them up in the evenings, etc. so it could turn out to not be cost-efficient in that sense, but then the question is whether they can cover the costs by upping the user fees and/or subsidizing the costs with money they're making in more populated areas. This would especially make sense if people are using their bikes/scooters to get to transit stations that serve small towns as satellites. So, for example, if someone lives in a bigger city with bike/scooter sharing and they want to take a train or bus to a small town, then it makes sense for there to be a share bike/scooter to use once they get off the bus or train, i.e. because that promotes the use of bikes/scooters in the city to go to the transit stations.

When you really break it down, what bike/scooter sharing is is using efficient mass-production to sell people multiple bikes/scooters that they can keep at various locations so they don't have to tote their own bike/scooter around with them wherever they go. It makes more sense in terms of efficiency to produce five or ten bikes and scooters per person than it does to produce a single car or truck. So what you're really doing when you participate in a bike/scooter share is to buy multiple bikes/scooters and have them available wherever you need them, which could include small towns.

You must not have heard about the hoards of people who live in small towns, and elsewhere willing to replace their personal motor vehicles for their transportation needs with a combination of dockless scooters/bikes and "transit stations serving their small towns" who are also ready to forego travel to any place currently easily traveled to by private motor vehicle but not within close proximity to this mode of travel.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh tells scooter-rental company to slow down | Boston Herald
This article says that scooters will be towed in Boston. That got me wondering what would happen if people just parked the scooters in regular parking spots. Wouldn't they be subject to the same rules as cars then? E.g. if there's a parking meter, just pay for the meter. The added bonus is that if someone has already parked a share scooter/bike in a parking spot and it's paid for, you can park yours there too. Just make sure there's enough time left in the meter so your share scooter/bike doesn't get towed.

Problem solved

Consider that to use any of these rental bikes, you have to install an app on your phone. (which has access to your location, contacts,and a myriad of other data sets) Not only that, but you must also use a cashless payment system of some sort to pay for these bikes. (these are not coin operated, like the old laundromat machines)

The younger generations are "all in", they won't know what cash is and why people ever used it. Ownership is another concept that will also seem quite foreign to them, why buy when you can rent.

The service is not profitable, on its own, however the path that it leads its users down will be very profitable for those who are on the receiving end of all of these transactions.

Ah, so the alleged "profitability" of data gathering from bike/scooter rental is only your best guess prediction and has yet to materialize, and is in fact dependent on "all of these [bike/scooter]transactions" to actually materialize. And is also dependent on the company running the rental operation [the source of the data] to stay in business "gathering data"despite losing money on the rental scheme endlessly from day one.

Why would a person parking a dockless rental bike pay for parking it when done using it? The user's parking "problem" is solved by leaving it anywhere at no cost to himself.

Why wouldn't/shouldn't Boston or any other municipality not remove/impound every rental bike parked in an illegal spot, especially at expired meters preventing the use of the parking space by other users? And of course charge the owner of the rental bike/scooters a hefty fine for return of every impounded bike/scooter. Problem of illegally parked bike/scooters would be quickly resolved.

That's what they're doing here in Fort Worth. Mind you, no dockless bike share is officially doing business here; these are just the ones that are finding their way here from Dallas.