... for the Barcelona tip. I'm going to have to check that out next month. I was considering bringing my folding bike (my company will pay to check it), but now I see that I can use the bike share bikes and just bring my fathead helmet.

Sweet.

I was just in Barcelona...

By Rob on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 12:25pm.

...where the system is called "Bicing." Stations are EVERYWHERE.

Again, stop bitching. It's a

By anon on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 3:02pm.

Again, stop bitching. It's a start. Be grateful.

Animated views are awesome

By Jeff F on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 3:17pm.

In Barcelona you can see the flow of people towards the waterfront during the day and then back towards (what I assume is more residential) inland areas of the city in the later evening. Cool!

didn't really see that

By Brett on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 5:19pm.

...but it did make me wonder.

Come late August or September, all the kiddies come back to school. The T still is shut down by 1. Taxis are hard to come by and expensive.

What's going to happen when BU students come out of the bars drunk as skunks and decide to hop on the rental bikes? And then crash them into stuff or are crashed into?

Answer: Boston Police will have a fun time trying to figure out whether to charge someone with OUI...bicycles are considered vehicles, so....?

I had been wondering how

By anon on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 10:50am.

I had been wondering how popular the bikes are. Until yesterday I hadn't actually seen anyone riding them.

Of course one issue is that you can rent bikes but apparently not helmets.

Yeah

By MattyC on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 11:49am.

Sharing helmets doesn't pass sanitary requirements. There is, however, supposed to be a program where you can buy low-cost helmets from nearby vendors. $10 I think. The lobby of Children's Hospital has a Safety Store which is one of the place that has agreed to sell these $10 helmets. Can't find anywhere else at the moment, but I would imagine if there is a need there, the market will fill it.

i bought a helmet from cvs in

By bobby on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 12:01pm.

i bought a helmet from cvs in downtown crossing for $7.99 yesterday. pretty awesome deal if you ask me. also took out one of the hubway bikes yesterday too. i apparently forgot that i hadn't ridden a bike in about a decade prior to doing so... so sorry for being "that guy on the bike" yesterday! but all in all, it was great, and i'm really excited that this is taking hold.

My first time in years, too

By Michael on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 12:57pm.

I took my first Hubway ride this weekend on the bike path along the Orange Line - figuring that if there was an exception to the "you never forget how" rule, it'd be me, and I'd rather splat on the pavement out there than on Boylston Street. I wobbled for about 30 seconds but then it did indeed come back to me. And every time I've locked a bike up at the end of the session, someone came over without fail to ask me about it. It's off to a great start, IMO.

YEah they've got maps of

By anon on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 12:21pm.

YEah they've got maps of "helmet vendors" on the stations too, but it seems like that extra step is another barrier to making these popular. It also seems that part of the rationale behind these was as either an impulse biking thing or a kind of ride and forget cycling experience. If you have to buy and lug around a helmet all day that makes it a bit less appealing

Sharing helmets

By Ron Newman on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 12:30pm.

Sanitary requirements or not, when you rent a bicycle from a store, a helmet generally comes with it. Also, if you test-ride a bike, the store will lend you a helmet (and maybe even insist on you using it).

Rosie the Maid

By Kaz on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 2:17pm.

Sorry, but we're not quite to the point where the Hubway station could automatically clean the helmet with a sanitary wipe just yet. When you rent from a store, etc. there's someone behind the counter who cleans the helmet when you're done.

ahahahahaaha

By Brett on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 5:20pm.

Riiiiight.

so let's get this straight

By Brett on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 5:30pm.

The idea behind Hubway is that tourists will buy a day or multi-day pass and then ride the bikes around, right?

So...they're also going to track down where to buy a helmet, and spend the money on them? And then take them home? Or they're going to bring one in their luggage?

How about John Q Bostonian? People don't bring helmets everywhere "just in case", yet Hubway lends itself to spontaneous trips.

And of course, since most people won't bother, the first person hit on a Hubway bicycle will (regardless of whether they were at fault) receive finger-wagging from the mayor and Nicole. Y'know, kind of like telling Mom she should have dressed her kid in kevlar in case he was shot at the park.

Fun fact: you're more likely to be injured as a pedestrian. Why aren't we making pedestrians walk around with helmets on?

Cite Brett?

By Jeff F on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 6:01pm.

Just looked - unsuccessfully - for any kind of cite to support your claim that walking is individually more dangerous than biking. Nada. Sure, more walkers get hurt than bikers, but in most cities the number of pedestrians is usually about two orders of magnitude greater than cyclists, so no suprise there.

Also, it seems to me that need for helmets = local small business opportunity. Like all the ones near subway stations already selling bottled water, coffee and T passes.

Made me look

By massmarrier on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 6:42pm.

There are tons of stats comparing modes of travel. A decent one that may be meaningful here is from the U.S. DOT in a 2007 injury report. It breaks it down by number, number of trips, related percentages and on and on.

For this discussion, bike fatalities and injuries are higher for bikes than pedestrians. However, motorcycles far surpass any other mode.

Motorcycles

By Kaz on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 7:26pm.

They are the highest. That's why most healthcare professionals call them by their actual name: "donorcycles".

Overheard in NYC

By SwirlyGrrl on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 12:51pm.

My husband and I were walking around mid-town Manhattan, and the people walking behind us were discussing Boston's bike share program.

One of the guys was trying to find a place to store a bike at home, but he said that he wasn't planning to do that anymore. He was going to buy a year membership ($35) and just use the bike share to commute. Since it would be less than a half hour most days, that would mean $35 for use of a good bike for a year, and no worries about storing it or locking it at work (where he could dock it) or the store (ditto).

This. Rocks.

By Omri on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 1:01pm.

My commute involves the 326 bus and then Copley Square. I got off the bus at Haymarket today to discover that at least 20 people had the same idea I did: the local hubway station was empty. Ran up to Government Center and got a bike there, and rode to Copley. It took the same amount of time, and I broke LESS of a sweat thanks to not being in the stifling heat of the Orange Line.

I took a look around today and I notice the bikes are very unevenly distributed, which indicates lots of commuters using these. Just a few days in and already the Hubway is becoming a victim of its own success.

Until they grow to accomadate the demand for one way traffic patterns, I recommend you all use SpotCycle, an iPhone app that tells you where you can find a bike and where you can dock it.

So far, this is a major win for the city.

SpotCycle

By Michael on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 1:32pm.

Android, too.

This is a Great Program

By Roslindalian on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 5:47pm.

In the past two days I've seen more than a dozen people riding around the financial district on these bikes. Some looked like tourists and some looked like locals just biking around.

I've seen them as well.

By roadman on Fri, 08/05/2011 - 11:42am.

Too bad the City allows the bikes to be rolling billboards, thus granting corporate America yet another means to shill their cheezy products in a public setting.

If a company like New Balance

By anon on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 3:04pm.

If a company like New Balance gives a lot of funding then they should be applauded for taking the burden off taxpayers. GO NEW BALANCE!!!

Rolling billboards?

By Allstonian on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 2:55pm.

Rolling billboards - you mean like the T? I can't think of any public transportation system I've used, anywhere, that didn't sell advertising. I don't see Hubway's displaying the logos of corporate sponsors as being any different.

Besides

By MattyC on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 3:02pm.

They paid for the whole program. Do we think they do that for good will and just to be nice?

By the way

By MattyC on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 3:04pm.

Took my first spin on the Hubway bikes last week. Just a quick little trip around the Govt Center area after I met my gf for lunch. The bikes are comfortable, and they handle ok. I wasn't a fan of the gearing, but a 3 speed is what it is, and I don't think the casual user is going to care if its is geared more for climbing hills than hitting top speed.

Could Hubway be too popular?

By anonway on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 2:21pm.

Saw this in the Metro:

Freedman said the goal was to have 3,000 members signed up before the end of the first operational year. On Thursday, the city provided numbers that showed Hubway’s usage will likely exceed that expectation.

http://www.metro.us/boston/lo

By anonway on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 2:55pm.

http://www.metro.us/boston/local/article/946694--c...

Where the Hubway bikes are

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