CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
I went for a second ride tonight and there was a problem with the system to return the bike as not every station is ready, so they've just closed it down until Monday.
Much sadness that I can't ride more tomorrow, but I was surprised it worked anyway.
That's all the docks imported into openstreetmap now.
Do they have lights, or just reflectors? I can't tell from the photos in the news.
The large unit at the front (presumably the lock) presumably locks the bike by immobilising the front wheel. I assume there are plenty of safeguards in place to stop it snapping shut when the bike is moving?
The large white dome on the front is of the lock is a running light but I don’t think it would light the way on an unlit street. It is also used to flash green to indicate a successful dock.
The long light on the back mudguard is a flashing red bike light
Both turn on when you unlock the bike and turn off when you dock it
Under the dome on the front is a wheel lock which is used to secure the bike in a virtual dock. The wheel lock is itself locked open unless released by the app. Unfortunately at this time there appears to be no way to pause your journey while ‘keeping the clock running’ so as to be able to nip into a shop or cafe while the bike is on hire.
The wheel lock isn’t used by a docking station, the assembly also contains some other lock that grabs and holds the bar in the dock
It would indeed be interesting to know if the wheel lock is fail safe or not. Does it spring shut if the bike's electrics fail or stay open until driven shut?
Well, I signed up at the early bird offer of £75 for the year. Clearly a business expense...
I'm often (only!) on my own bike in town, but it'll be handy for nights out when I can get the bus and then cycle around etc. Or other impromptu bus trips into town. Also, I wanted to support the scheme!
The wheel lock is still a normal manual sprung wheel lock but with an electric release to prevent it from being used away from an approved area
I really do hope for a ‘Greggs mode’ after the scheme settles in to allow quick stops.
The wheel lock is still a normal manual sprung wheel lock but with an electric release to prevent it from being used away from an approved area
So of I cycle one out of the green zone along the canal it'll snap shut and dump me in the drink....?
So of I cycle one out of the green zone along the canal it'll snap shut and dump me in the drink....?
There's only one way to be sure!
Wheel locks spring open though?
So you can't open the lock outside the Green Zone?
Yes. It's not a dockless system, you can't just take or leave bikes where you like. If you're using one of the 'virtual docks' (it's not yet clear how big these will be, there appears to be none in the 1st wave) then you will need to use your phone to lock or unlock the bike. To lock the bike you *also* need to push the lever by hand so you're never going to be dumped over the handlebars.
Ah. Good. Had hoped there'd be a manual action, or at least that the lock would wait until the bike stopped before locking it up.
I've noticed that Edinburgh is already on the Bike share map - http://bikes.oobrien.com/edinburgh/#zoom=13&lon=-3.2067&lat=55.9517
Useful for stats and graphs.
I walked over Waverley bridge earlier and couldn’t spot the rack that is supposed to be there. Hope there’s not too many ghost docks on Monday, will lead to confused and unhappy customers
Since the map went live the mystery T05 dock has now disappeared and an extra two have been added, one at Pollock and one at Summerhall
Someone appears be riding or driving around a test bike commissioning all of the remaining 'disabled' stations as I type
A further additional large (25 space) dock has appeared on the map at the Edinburgh Uni library in George Sq
I'll be unhappy if the uni library dock replaces bike parking there, already tragically insufficient in term time.
Supplements the Library bike stands, rather than replaces, however I think it may well prevent/reduce expansion of the "new" stands at this point.
Robert
“
Edinburgh Cycle Hire In Fall 2018, Urban Sharing's technology will be launched for the first time outside of Norway with the new Edinburgh Cycle Hire scheme in Scotland. The system will feature our user interfaces, backoffice tools, and custom hybrid locks that allow for virtual stations using geo-fencing technology.
“
One more late addition spotted, Victoria Park
I would speculate that that one, and the one at Porty, will mostly be there to enable circular leisure riding rather than point to point journeys
It won’t take many students making a trip from Pollock to the beach to fill it up quickly!
Klaxon broke it!
Works in Oslo. Didn't realise they were same company.
They use a cargo bike to do maintenance. Chatted with them and said I would do pic for forum. Very popular as you can see.
https://flic.kr/p/2ax9kRM
Bikes now going in docks if you watch the map
I work work for Urban Sharing AS, and I've been in Edinburgh the last few days supporting Serco, the operator that'll be running the system here, in getting everything ready for launch tomorrow.
Urban Sharing operate the cycle hire schemes in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim in Norway. Trondheim and Bergen runs on the same platform and technology as Edinburgh, while Oslo runs on a different platform. In Edinburgh, we supply the hybrid lock solution and software to manage operations.
I'd be happy to answer any technical questions you might have!
As some of you noticed, station availability has changed quite a bit today, as we've tested stations and docking points. You'll see the map on https://edinburghcyclehire.com/stations getting more and more red (that's a good thing!) throughout the night and early morning.
Regarding OSM: We'd be super happy to help out in any way we can. The GBFS feeds, as you've noticed, have coordinates for all the stations. What else would be useful for the OSM community that we could provide? (Don't tell anyone, but we'll actually be switching from Google Maps to an OSM based provider in our apps and on the web. Expect higher quality maps around several stations in Edinburgh when it's rolled out.)
Regarding lights: It's correct that the front light won't light the way on a dark street; it has a set of blinking LEDs that follows UK requirements for cyclist visibility, but it's not meant as a torch.
You've already figured out the dome in the front contains two locking mechanisms: One to grab and hold on to a bar that's in the docking points, and one which locks the wheel to itself. The latter is spring loaded to the open position, which means locking it requires manual intervention, so it can't lock itself by accident (or due to software bugs!). When you dock a bike to a virtual station, the app will ask you to move the locking bolt yourself. The dome also contains electronics such as a 2G/3G modem, GPS receiver and various sensors.
berge, welcome! It’s awesome to have you on the board!
I’d like to directly throw out a few questions some of which I’ve already posted
- Can you implement a ‘pause’ mode where the bike may be locked by the wheel lock in any location but the hire timer keeps going? The use case is to be able to stop and secure a hired bike outside a shop while en route to a final destination.
- Is the app going to be translated into other languages - European and Asian? I ask this entirely selflessly as a traveller - unless cash payments are taken, registering for another city’s bike share system is usually a painful or impossible experience. These systems are *ideal* for tourists and foreign students. McDonalds does this extremely well on their new touchscreen order systems
- What happens when a dock overfills? Do they all become virtual docks? With spacing in the initial rollout being very wide, moving to another dock will simply not be acceptable!
There's a launch day free trial offer.
Looking at the new bikes, I shared a few words in the station this morning with one of the guys who works for the train catering company
There's no signage, either on the bikes or around the docks, to tell you how to hire one or where to sign up, so I talked him through it. He was quite excited up until the point you needed a smartphone.
So I ask the question, are there other payment methods coming like SMS or contactless card? I realize why you'd want to build a cashless system, but a smartphone-only system is going to exclude a big chunk of society.
@klaxon, when I was talking to the people trialling them at city chambers it did seem to be smart phone only. That is me and IWRATS out too. We use ten pound phones to avoid being tracked.
Gear ratio for the hills is my other query. The polis officer in our car park looked to be struggling on the flat. I do not think she had it in first though.
...when I was talking to the people trialling them atcity chambersan undisclosed location it did seem to be smart phone only. That is me and IWRATS out too. We use ten pound phones to avoid being tracked."
FTFY.
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