Bike Ride
=========
From April 16 there is a "shared bikes" service in my city. Actually
there was something during last year but it was available only in very
limited area too far from here.
This year there is a NextBike company [1] which offers the bikes in
several places inside university campus. They are also available on
many places in the city, too.
From my point of view there are some good news and some bad ones. The
good ones first:
* First 15 minutes are free. My ride to work is 12 minutes (plus 4
minutes to get to the bike parking place). Opposite direction is not so
good: in theory it's just 9 minutes but there are consistently no
available bikes in afternoon.
* The bike has some ability to run uphill. It's actually pretty good
for a dedicated city bike.
* It is easy to leave the bike anywhere - one just has to lock it.
* The Android app (which is necessary to lend a bike) is relatively
intelligent - if the phone/tablet has no camera or if it cannot scan a
QR code then it is possible to enter a bike number manually. So there
are no limitations by bat visibility or hardware limitations.
And the bad news:
* Android only control. One needs an Android app and data connection
(or WiFi). There is a possibility to call technical support to unlock
the bike without the Android app but it is a bit impractical (and only
possible between 9am and 6pm). The app works on my Gemini PDA but I'm
WiFi-only device so I can only connect inside the university campus as
there are near no free WiFi hotspots in the city (there were big plans
about free WiFi on bus stops but there is still almost nothing). I
don't use mobile data at all (my Punkt phone cannot use them) and I
don't think that it makes sense to have a phone with data just to be
able to sometimes lend a bike...
I will probably have to invest some money to new tyres for my bike -
it's easier to ride than these city ones and it also can run without
Android phone and mobile data...
References:
[1]
http://netxbikeczech.com
