Hubway

With Hubway bikes ready for riding for the season, Boston is soliciting bids from companies that would want to install and maintain "bicycle helmet vending machines at various locations throughout the city."

Bids are due by April 10 for the initial one-year contract.

H/t Brian D'Amico.

With Hubway season almost over, you may not get much use out of this, but file it away for the spring: Chris Snyder recently discovered a trick for getting a Hubway bicycle that's stuck in its docking bay.

And that's not a good thing, say researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who had trained observers stationed outside Hubway rental kiosks last year.

Some 80% of Hubway users rode with no head protection - a far higher number than non-rental riders - according to their study, printed today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

"Head injury accounts for about a third of all bicycle injuries and about three-quarters of bicycle related deaths, so these are some pretty shocking numbers," says lead author and emergency medicine physician Christopher Fischer, MD. "We were surprised to find that of all bicyclists, more than half rode without helmets. But it was even more concerning to learn that four out of five bike share riders were out there without helmets."

Researchers said helmet uses decreases the risk of head and brain injury by 65 to 88 percent. Their observers spent a total of 50 hours observing 3,000 bicycle riders outside rental kiosks in Boston and Washington, DC.

Last fall, Hubway and the city released stats showing no injuries in 100,000 rides.

Of course, where some people see an exciting way for Boston to cycle into the 21st century, lawyers see the potential for new business:

Boston's Hubway bike-share system will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the number of cyclists sharing the road with automobiles. Unfortunately, this increase in the volume of cyclists on the road will likely also lead to an increase of bicycle accidents in the City of Boston.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a bike accident, please contact the law firm of Altman & Altman, LLP to schedule a Free Initial Consultation with one of our skillful Greater Boston bike accident lawyers. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In addition to being available around the clock, all emails sent to the law firm of Altman & Altman receive an immediate response.

H/t Adam Castiglioni.

The state Department of Transportation and the city of Boston today announced a competition for applications that let users navigate between the T and the Hubway bike system and find the location of the nearest food trucks.

State and city officials are hoping the real-time MBTA and Hubway data, coupled with information about food trucks, will lead to the same sorts of applications that emerged after a similar competition in 2009, then based just on data for certain bus routes.

Officials announced three categories of apps: One that highlights "the transit connections" between the T and Hubway rental stations, one that best visualizes "A day in the life of the MBTA and New Balance Hubway" and "Bikes, Lunch and T" to highlight city food trucks.

Apps can be submitted through Feb. 24. Developers of the winning apps will get a CharlieCard LinkPass and Hubway membership good for one year and two free passes to upcoming food-truck festivals.

BU Today's Leslie Friday takes Hubway for a spin to find out what all of the fuss is about:

All along Newbury Street and Comm Ave, habitual bikers whiz by me, their backdraft mocking my steady, but slower, speed. Hubway bikes are made for heavy-duty use by people of all skill levels—more like beach cruisers than speed racers, so I enjoy the sights. The Citgo sign looms as I cross back onto campus. By now my legs are burning, the setting sun is striking me squarely in the eyes, and I’m going uphill to my last stop: FitRec.

[...] So, lessons learned: visit Hubway’s site beforehand, bring a helmet and a cell phone, and don’t rely on these bikes if you’re on a tight schedule. I wasn’t, so I chalked it up as another urban adventure.

Have you tried Hubway yet? What have your experiences been so far?

Test-Driving Hubway | BU Today

Dan recounts a couple of sightings of tourists on rental bikes:

Here they came up Congress Street, arriving at the five way intersection of Congress, State and Devonshire just as the light turned green. Zig-zagging slightly, the male, who was in the lead, stopped in the middle of the road, clearly unsure where to go. Straight? Slight right? Sharp right? He turned to consult the female, and then something caught his eye. "I think that's it!" he yelled behind him, gesturing in the direction of the Old State House. ...

The man unslung his camera, still blocking traffic. Drivers hollered insults not heard at that spot since the Boston Massacre nearly two and a half centuries ago. Arms shot from windows as cars swerved by the still-oblivious couple, fingers extended in the universal sign for "get out of the road you $&@?/! dumb-ass $?%#!!".

Via Red Mass. Group.

The Dorchester Reporter discusses.

I've been a member of The Hubway for 2 weeks. All those bikes await me at South Station but I'm conscientiously waiting for my helmet (which I foolishly purchased on-line). The customer service line there is infuriating. Today I was told by a woman that she'd have to get back to me to tell me when someone would get back to me, and that, no, she couldn't give out the email address of the person responsible for helmets. An email request to support went unanswered. Anybody else having this problem?

Andy Riga, who writes about transportation for the Montreal Gazette, writes today that what I (and other folks) took as umbrage at Boston was, in fact, umbrage as his own city's civic leaders.

Seems Montreal officialdom has to promote the fact that other cities have adopted their Bixi-style bike-sharing program in an effort to justify the tens of millions of dollars in subsidies the city has poured into the system. So when Riga noted that a front-page Globe story on our own Hubway ignored Montreal completely, he was sternly wagging his finger at le maire, not at us. And he swears he didn't really mean that crack about the Bruins. And he now knows why a Boston network might have "Hub" in its name.

An alert citizen reports this morning that somebody took offense to the Hubway bike-rental station outside the Brigham Circle Diner on Huntington Avenue.

Originally posted at Union Jack Creative on July 29th, 2011 - from two Boston bikers to hundreds of new Hubway riders, nine tips to make biking better for you, and for the rest of us.

It’s no secret that we’re pretty big on bikes. We think they’re pretty fun to ride (and are kind of like magic carpets ferrying you home in the wee hours when everyone else is fighting for cabs) and we love when friends ask us for help breaking into biking in the city. More bikes are better for everyone involved, in our opinion.

And so, though we’re a bit confused as to the target market, we really want to get behind Boston’s Hubway bike share initiative, which had its grand opening last Thursday. Kiosks are up, bikes are out and locals are signing up – but what about that influx of new riders?

Map showing Hubway stations and the percentages of bikes that are available.

Via Sarah Grafman.

Dan K photographed City Hall Plaza full of new bikes awaiting the formal launch of the Hubway bike-rental network today.

The Globe notes that the draft map of the new Hubway bike-rental network shows no rental kiosks south of Roxbury Crossing and Brigham Circle:

"They're all in the downtown area, with the tourists and the wealthy people," lamented 21-year-old Genesis Baez, who lives in Jamaica Plain.

The Globe quotes Hubway honchos that bike-rental systems only work where they can have rental stations every few hundred yards; leafy JP is just not dense enough for that.

Ed. note: And so JP gets a taste of what life is like for those of us in the real boonies down in Roslindale, Hyde Park and West Roxbury.

Hubway, the impending bike-rental network, wants your suggestions for where they first start renting bikes sometime this month.