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I test rode one of Edinburgh's new Voi electric hire bikes - and they're the business
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Edinburgh Cycle Hire Scheme
(1919 posts)-
Posted 2 months ago #
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App currently seems to show NO bikes
All on hire?
All being maintained?
Problem with app??
Posted 2 months ago # -
I see three, but I also saw someone on Bluesky mentioning seeing balaclava bams firing about them on Princes St - so potentially they’ve pulled them if they’ve already been ‘figured out’.
Posted 2 months ago # -
Voi were contracting locally in other locations for battery swap, & regulation of bike supply at hire points
As yet no clear detail on who might be contractor on this. Some places work with local cycle logistics operators, which could be a good fit
On that basis I note that Zedify has risen from ashes in Glasgow & Edinburgh with a few lessons learned. However this may initially be small electric vans rather then cargo bikes with main traffic from local logistics rather then the big names, who prefer to control the whole chain from warehouse to customer, whilst fiercely holding prices down, and thus paying terrible rates per drop for the staff on the 'final mile' often well below £1 per item, so that at least 100 deliveries per shift are needed to make a decent daily income
Still a lack of sensible cycle parking stands to match those used across much of Europe, without a parking 'rack' the prop/centre stands are too easily knocked over & don't deliver neatly parked bikes, using weight of bike to hold it upright & in orderly style
Posted 2 months ago # -
Currently 6 for hire, inc one in Inch.
Earlier there were 2 there (not in same street).
Posted 2 months ago # -
I do hope the council specified some sort of minimum availability in their contract with VOI so that it can be ended early if consistently not fulfilled. There also needs to be a better way of reporting dead bikes than trying to tell the chat robot on the app, which doesn't seem to understand. With the JustEat bikes you could send a tweet to the operators with the name of the bike and the location and report via the app.
Posted 1 month ago # -
Currently one available ‘in the zone’ and one still in the Inch…
Posted 1 month ago # -
Currently 10 available ‘in the zone’ and none in the Inch.
Posted 1 month ago # -
Emailed the Voi contacts I have but no answers yet. A few possibilities;
- Software updates needed to deal with riding out of zone meant pulling bikes in for maintenance (it has been observed by Harry Williams and others that riding out of zone doesn’t currently result in bike stopping / go-slow)
- Reactive to initial interest from nutters - pull them in over the weekend and put them out again ready for the working week?
Posted 1 month ago # -
I note that Nick Brown CEO (UK) with Velogik has announced thet they are the chosen contractor for management & maintenance of Edinburgh's Voi bike scheme
They are already the contractor for the now ending Nextbike operations in Glasgow, & are also delivering for Beryl Bikes in Leeds, so I suspect that Glasgow may see Velogik remain as the core contractor here as well.
Nick Brown has posted commentary on how public bike hire schemes need to be considered as an holistic element of local mobility, very much part of a coherent & coordinated management plan for pavement space across the city - providing dedicated (carriageway) pavements for buses, setting (& enforcing) realistic pricing for storage of empty cars on valuable city centre land, with seamless facilities to transfer to the best value mode of transport for a journey with minimal hassle
For Edinburgh & Glasgow this should mean the options to use bus passes, or an equivalent as the key to access all your mobility options, paying for bus trips, bike hire, car parking, car hire & even taxis. People could even pay ahead with travel trip credits, and get a really clear picture of which option is costing least for each trip made. Making 'frivolous' short car trips, with the parking charges, & car club prices for short journeys would certainly be more expensive than walking or cycling or taking a bus & this would make the costs of those choices more visible, both to the individual users but also the large sites (like hospitals) giving the management valuable data on the number of trips and the resources used to deliver them
Still some fine tuning I suspect, and I've raised the issue with some bar staff who can suffer worse than their customers as late night buses run down, and they face a huge taxi fare when a bike hire, or a 'floating' car club vehicle gets them the relatively short distance home after work. Pubs could even offer single use vouchers (cheap printer QR code paper 'tickets' that can also collect data to fill in the gaps fro late night buses etc
Posted 1 month ago # -
18+ bikes available this morning, looks to be ramping back up?
Posted 1 month ago # -
Currently showing 21 available.
Last night around 10 and this morning about 9, it fluctuated between 18 and 14.
I suggest there are no more than 25 actively in the fleet at present.
Posted 1 month ago # -
Ooh 26
I’ll stop looking!
Posted 1 month ago # -
Was it as simple as they'd all run of battery charge and hadn't had their batteries swapped over? I heard from a friend that they walked past a parking space with a couple of bikes available which didn't show on the app. Maybe teething problems with the maintenance schedule.
Posted 1 month ago # -
The one thast I tried last Wednesday showed a range of 100km. If they all have run the batteries down then that would be a massive sucess!
Posted 1 month ago # -
Rode an Explorer Light 1 this morning - it's a markedly different ride to the larger Explorer 4:
- I'm a giant, and I felt like I was a clown on a kid bike - couldn't get the seat high enough / topped out on adjustment
- Much nippier in the acceleration, however combined with the lighter weight it feels very unlike any other ebike I've ridden
- Overall I didn't really enjoy that style of bike as much, which is a pain as the app doesn't indicate which style of bike it is on the map, you'd need to be in front of it to know. In a pinch I'd opt for it but I'd also go out my way to find an Explorer 4
- I wondered - having never tried a Brompton - whether that would be a comparable difference in ride
- The app showed two bikes at Bruntsfield Links, but when I got there, three bikes were present - one with no light on. Not sure if that warrants reporting, I'm sure they probably know where it is either way.
I also had another run in with Shakespeares pub parking outside - this time with pub staff rather than the Coffee box chap. It was interesting as the interaction started with them basically trying to police the parking zone, which has been confirmed by Council officers as outside of Shakespeares' permitted zone for tables and chairs on the footway. I parked in it anyway and the conversation changed in tone when they realised I could give them officer / Voi email addresses...
While officers reassured me when I raised this zone being a conflict that there wasn't a permit for this space, it turns out Shakespeares get a temporary permit over the summer for an extended zone, and it looks like the council may have failed to reference temporary permits when planning zones with Voi.
Posted 1 month ago # -
Despite the app currently saying "technical difficulties" they're currently offering a 30% discount for me for the next few hours, but too late to get me to the dentist and back. There was one out of the zone but available at the bingo/gym/steps corner of Meadowbank shops a little earlier which would have been 500m closer to me than the current nearest offical P zone, but was gone when I needed to set off.
Fit, reach and saddle position notwithstanding, so far I slightly prefer the smaller models for their slightly better response and the absence of any additional unexpected assistance or withdrawal thereof caused by the gears. I finally tried one of the big ones yesterday and it wouldn't engage the lower gear except when starting off - even slowing right down and creeping up a steep hill it would provide assistance, but only in the high gear. As with the smaller model, it felt like there's a very sudden flip from assistance to active hindrance beyond the 25km/h point, though it's better to be limited to 25km/h in that way than by the Just Eat Cycles method of not being able to spin any faster in the low gear. It's perhaps due to the newness bu the steering was very stiff on the big one, preventing fine-tuning when setting off, so I found myself weaving slightly whilst waiting for the assistance to kick in.Posted 1 month ago # -
I found I could get gear shifting out of the Explorer 4 on a hill by backing off pedalling briefly and then resuming again - might be worth a try
Posted 1 month ago # -
In an unprecedented move, Mrs Morningsider expressed an interest in using the hire e-bikes to get to work. She hoped to test one out this lunch time. There were no bikes showing at any nearby virtual dock. Undeterred, she went hunting for one in case the app was glitching.
She eventually found one...lying on its side with a broken stand which was apparently due for maintenance, and then the app flaked out.
Way to go guys, how not to win people over to cycling.
How can the main "lesson learned from the last time" be to do almost exactly the same thing - too few bikes, randomly located parking spots, almost no communication with users, flaky app, poor security...
I was in London at the weekend and saw thousands of people on Lime bikes. They were everywhere. I don't think I saw a road, street, lane, path, or clump of bushes that didn't sport a Lime bike. There were Voi bikes in a couple of the boroughs where Lime bikes are 'banned' - I did not see any in use, instead folk seemed to prefer the Forest bikes.
Hopefully Voi can turn this around.
Posted 1 month ago # -
The one thast I tried last Wednesday showed a range of 100km. If they all have run the batteries down then that would be a massive sucess!
When I checked this morning most of them had a near full battery but a lot of them are now showing as Low. Not sure if that's indicative of them being used a lot more than expected or something else.
Posted 1 month ago # -
There's been a fairly persistent 'we're having technical issues' banner on the app today. Might account for some of the flakiness and potentially low battery readouts?
Posted 1 month ago # -
There needs to be a quick "I'd like to rent a bike but am giving up as none appear to be available" button on the app, which records the time and location, the better to help them sort out their recharging and redistribution schedules according to demand. At the moment this appears to have to be done by hand through the feedback robot.
Posted 1 month ago # -
Four bikes in Leith this morning: two on Great Junction Street near the foot of the walk/Kirkgate and two just off Leith Walk on Jane St.
Posted 1 month ago # -
In addition to the 4 out of zone, 3 at Pollock Halls and 2 others.
‘Teething problems’ inevitable, but I think that doesn’t really cover it…
Posted 1 month ago # -
Now only seeing 2 at Pollock, the Leith ones and nothing else. Which is fascinating, and also frustrating as our cargo bike is currently offline and I was using them to fill the gap.
Emails to team Voi have gone totally unanswered. Perhaps something to feed back for when a more permanent contract is forged, that transparency in comms is a requirement.
Posted 1 month ago # -
It took several clicks and selections over a couple of minutes to report the Jane Street objects in the app after I'd scuttled past to check they weren't just a couple of ripped-put GPS units in a skip. I'll see if it's any quicker to pretend to be a non-app-using person and to email them as recommended on the website. It feels like reporting them with the app should be a lot quicker - either selecting a bike if shown, or long-pressing the location.
Posted 1 month ago # -
Reports on this Reddit thread about miscreants already circumventing the locks and taking bikes. Also people trying to ride bikes but all of them at a location having no battery charge. It's really not going particularly well is it...
Posted 1 month ago # -
My new take on this, after coming in via Bruntsfield where nothing was marked on the map but there were two unusable bikes, is that the whole fleet is more or less out, but not charged.
I think they're hiring for an Edinburgh ops team, don't have it in place yet, and aren't keeping up with usage. So I'm hopeful this is just a teething issue to do with resourcing it adequately, and there having been more use than they expected immediately.
I'm sure there's also bams trying to figure them out, but I don't think that's the widespread issue making it seem like there's hardly any available.
Posted 1 month ago # -
I appreciate that launching a new scheme is always challenging. However, this is meant to be an experienced operator, working with a Council that has "learned lessons" from the previous scheme.
It seems clear the scheme has launched before things were ready - especially if there really is no team in place and the tech that controls the Edinburgh scheme hasn't been fully tested and updated.
Why do this? Would it really have hurt to wait a few weeks to get this all sorted before launch?
Posted 1 month ago # -
- Technical issues seem really bizarre given that they operate in other UK cities; potentially, behind the scenes they could be standing up a server / instance per location, but you'd have expected that to be de rigeur;
- It makes sense there would be less than fifty bikes if you need to pull some out for maintenance and have others needing recovered, but not the low, low levels we're seeing.
- As far as I understand it from having conversations with their PR people, the email address I was given was for the UK MD managing Edinburgh currently until a city-specific Customer Success Manager is appointed. What I'm reading from the tea leaves is there was pressure to launch given the Council had kept saying 'no it's fine, we're on track for August' and they wanted to greet Student hoardes with a fleet of hire bikes; but the initial impression the availability issues are giving is hardly standing them in good stead to encourage use.
Posted 1 month ago #
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