CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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From the stations map today:
Either a lot of people have decided to cycle from the South Side or the New Town today (and gravity seems to have attracted quite a few bikes to Victoria Quay), or, worse, rather a lot of bikes seem to have been "long term borrowed" for a "free ride"?
I hope it's not the latter, but if I'm not mistaken, the number of bikes showing in the system just now does seem rather down compared to normal?
Indeed, just 197 bikes in the system right now (including those available for hire as well as being used right now) instead of the ~450 we saw before the expansion and free weekend.
I’ve seen quite a few bikes waiting for maintenance so hopefully it’s not all due to vandalism.
Do we know how many rides were taken during the free week?
The number of bikes available (snapshot at 12 noon every day) has crashed down since early May. Remarkable given the free week was still to come. You'd think they would increase the number of bikes. The number of bikes out riding does spike during the free week.
(larger image)
@HankChief You can see some stats on my site, it's the second graph down: https://publictransport.io/cyclehire - some very impressive days!
I'm surprised the trip numbers are remaining strong (~500 so far today) despite the frequent desert of bikes in the city centre
Any theories on why the numbers have been drawn down so low that at this point half of all docking points are empty? Numbers are buoyant since free week and every empty dock is suppressed and unmet demand
Could be:
Theft/vandalism
Electrical failures of lock units (3g problems, li-ion batteries failing prematurely)
Mechanical failures of bikes with insufficient resource to repair
The last time this happened was through January and no public statement was ever made by the operator except a dubious half truth to the press about them needing to re-fit all the saddle clamps
@CycleAlex can I suggest flipping your top graph so the bars are sideways? It's not scaling very well...
@Klaxon Thanks, I've been thinking what to do about that as it's pretty horrific on mobile!
A lot of the docks that are showing empty often have a bike or two in them so I imagine significantly higher maintenance than expected could be having an impact. They seemed to have some connection issues on one day in the free week but I can't imagine that would knock half the fleet offline...
The Pinkhill hire point has been targeted a few times for vandals using the sophisticated method of bashing the unit off the front wheel with a brick.
@CycleAlex I think splitting out into two bars would be an improvement as well, otherwise seeing the split data is hard for the docks with lower ridership
Here's a sketch: https://imgur.com/a/ORmm3Ei
What website is MV's graph from? A re drawing of that same data could take top spot with the big long detailed list at the bottom, so it's going from less to more granular stats
What website is MV's graph from?
It's a website called citycyclingedinburgh.info, you may have heard of it :-)
I made that graph myself and just post it here when I feel like it. I've got a little script that generates it.
I don't mind of course if CycleAlex puts something like that on his website, that's up to him. Something that spans a longer time period than the current month would be insightful in top spot, e.g. his "daily trips in [month]" but over the past ~6 months.
Still far too many bikeless hire points around large contiguous areas of Leith Walk, south side, and even the usually fairly well stocked (but otherwise "isolated") King's Buildings, just now.
These seem to be areas of regular high demand, so surely it would make sense to add more hire points in these areas?
(Does anyone know if any research has been done on the optimal spacing for bike hire points? My guess would be about 3 - 6 minutes' walk apart: once you get towards 10 minutes that's really quite a schlep, and you'd probably have been better off taking a bus already!)
I noticed the docking station next to St Andrews House had two docking hoops missing! looked like they'd been vandalised rather than removed officially.
There's a docking hoop missing from Bristo Sqare which looked like it had been vandalised. There haven't been many, if any, bikes available there for a few days now.
I’ve been meaning to ask - is there any sign of the Pause Journey option yet? Hunting back through this thread suggests it may have appeared on Android, but I certainly couldn’t find it recently in the iOS app.
I haven't seen it yet on iOS. Amusingly when looking for info on it I realised we currently have less available bikes than when the scheme launched despite having 61 more docks now...
@Klaxon That's really helpful, thank you! Design is very much not my expertise.
@MV I was looking at something like that but it's a bit of a pain since the data is supplied in monthly batches (and can be rather large). Will see if I can do it without taking 2 years for the page to load!
Even more zeroes on the map just now, I'm wondering whether there will even be a bike for me to be able to get home on this evening!
(I wonder how pro-active they are about reshuffling bikes: my anecdatal feeling is that Castle Street always seems to have more bikes parked and not so much usage (perhaps once George Street is improved?), whereas St Andrew Square often seems popular (possibly a convenientish start point for switching from bus to bike if you don't fancy cycling up Leith Walk / Picardy Place).)
@ECT: St Andrew's House was officially notified to users as "out of use" a few days ago (but without explaining why), and it looks as though it is still "offline" on the map.
https://www.serco.com/uk/news/media-releases/2019/free-week-of-city-cycling-sparks-chain-reaction
riiiiight
Strategically positioned safely in a warehouse somewhere?
Is there anywhere to suggest/enquire about future points that would be useful?
Getting tram from Gyle into town, to then go to Grassmarket and realised there's no docking points at Haymarket or anywhere near Shandwick Place tram stop. Or indeed Grassmarket at the other end. Can imagine both would have significant usage!
Possibly in hand once there's actually some bikes out though?
I am rather more worried that a not insignificant proportion might have ended up being "strategically re-positioned" amongst a large number of ne'er-do-wells' garden sheds or hallways...? :-(
@newtoit Here's the dock request form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSft70Zbl-4Z5-gszn9BReuPcxxTl2NQCDkoNU5UjvCxRzupaA/viewform
Spoke to the in-app chat today and mentioned about the lack of bikes. They said that bike numbers will be back up again soon. Apparently updates are necessary and can't be preformed over the air so a mechanic is needed to manually update each bike.
Between Sunday 5 May and Saturday 11 May 5,045 trips were made by 3,344 new users who signed up to the free deal.
The scheme’s operators say that the free week was the busiest to date since the scheme launched in September last year and expects usage rates to rise as a result of introducing more people to the bikes.
https://www.theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2019/05/good-reception-for-a-free-week-of-cycle-hire/
The pause function has been available on Android for quite a while now and is really useful. Another good addition is the ability to use the virtual docking next to racks when they're full up. Seats seem to go up higher on newer bikes as well which is good.
@CycleAlex hopefully this is the update to the bikes themselves that brings Pause to iOS devices, they said to me before it’s a big job to roll it out
I wonder if there’s an agreement with Edinburgh Uni where the Kings Buildings docks are only actively stocked in term time? Seems odd to go from a usually busy few docks to completely empty.
@Klaxon That would be great! Shame about the timing, hopefully not many people coming from the free week were put off by the lack of bikes in the centre
How do you gauge the success of the scheme? My local dock had no cycles at all the other day and I wondered if they had been discontinued. Then I saw a couple there the other night. Does that mean they're all being used? It's like cycle lanes - anti-cyclists point to them as being empty as compared to the car choked lanes and say, see, wasted space. Empty just means efficiently handling traffic.
Optimal running is every dock close to empty but not so close that there’s ever somebody who can’t make a journey because there’s no bike there
At the moment there’s less bikes on the road than there was on day 1 with fifteen docks, they’re spread very very thin. That means lots of empty docks which means suppressed demand.
Another day with still too many zeroes over several large contiguous areas, «sigh»
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