Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

Re:Lime and Bird are growing rapidly by anonytrary on Monday December 03, 2018 @09:27PM (#18595486)

I suggested elsewhere in the thread, it'd be neat if they included a fourth class in the model: hub owners, in addition to the existing classes of supplier (Bird), riders (customers) and the chargers. The hub owners would register their places (private residence, business, campus, city area, etc.) as bird hubs, and people would only be allowed to ride birds between hubs. This would solve the "trash/get-off-my-lawn" problem.

The hub idea isn't feasible unless tons of people are already riding birds and creating a mess everywhere, because people probably wouldn't sign up as hub owners unless the demand was already deemed high. They are probably just ramping up usage right now until people start complaining, at which point Bird will be big enough to start issuing out hubs.

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Re:Lime and Bird are growing rapidly by lazyasciiart on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @01:09AM (#18596784)

You know bike shares with docks is a super common existing model, and dockless bike share is specifically built as an improvement to that?

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Re:Lime and Bird are growing rapidly by lozenge on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @05:06AM (#18598024)

There are services that will credit your account if you leave the bike in a designated dock area, but you can still leave it in other areas.

This improves on docks in that the "dock" can just be a geofence with a few lines painted on the ground, whereas traditional docks are very sturdy and hence expensive.

This improves on dockless in that it's a more reliable place to pick up bikes, and still gives you the freedom of leaving your bike in other places.

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Re:Lime and Bird are growing rapidly by anonytrary on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @02:14AM (#18597060)

I would imagine it would be a lot easier for civilians to host scooter waypoints at their residence. Bike docks seem like more effort, I can't seem them being a popular option for homes. At scale, the idea is that half of the houses in a neighborhood would host hubs for scooters. At high hub densities, the distinction between docked and dockless becomes negligible, however the hub solution has the added benefit of people not leaving vehicles at random locations.

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Re:Lime and Bird are growing rapidly by lazyasciiart on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @03:39AM (#18597545)

I don't understand why you think anyone would do this, but I am also not sure that it would be any more legal to run a scooter rental hub at most homes than it is to put a pile of scooters on the sidewalk.

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Re:Lime and Bird are growing rapidly by anonytrary on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @05:04AM (#18598015)

Sorry, why do you think it's a rental hub? It's not a rental hub, you're simply giving Bird riders consent to use your property to drop their scooters off (as opposed to them dropping their scooters off on a random person's property, which bypasses consent and is far worse). All of the rental happens between Bird and the rider, you're just giving people permission to leave scooters on your lawn. It's an opt-in rather than opt-out system, which is how it should be.

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Re:Lime and Bird are growing rapidly by lazyasciiart on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @02:07PM (#18602637)

It is a hub for people to collect rental bikes. You are giving people permission to use your private property only if they have a specific commercial relationship with a business that you also have a specific commercial relationship to, which has a lot of differences to residential use. I'm not an expert, but I'd be pretty stunned if e.g a standard home insurance policy was willing to cover you under those circumstances.

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