Bay Area Bike Share (“BABS”) membership sign up begins today.
You can bet your bottom bracket that I’m signed up for the $88 annual membership. 24 hour membership runs $9, while 3 day memberships go for $22. Unlimited use of the bikes in San Francisco, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose is included in this membership as long as you return the bike to a kiosk within 30 minutes. Go beyond 30 minutes and it’s $4 for the first hour, then $7 for each additional 30 minutes beyond that.
The 30 minute time limit encourages high turnover so more people can use the bikes. Otherwise, you might just ride the bike to your office and keep it there all day before returning home for the evening.
How does bike share ensure bike availability at transit stations during the commute? Workers balance the fleet by loading piles of bikes up on their trucks up to return them to heavily used kiosks. The process is reversed in the evening.
Go to Bay Area Bike Share and sign up today!
“then $7 for each additional 30 minutes beyond that”! It’s seven times higher than the latest rental bike in Osaka which is not cheap. http://mamabicycle.blogspot.jp/2013/07/umerin-cycle-rental-bikes-in-osaka.html
In my opinion, apart from the rate, it’s convenient for the owners to use every station which is located every several miles, considering a car share program in Japan. The more stations are addressed the more conveniently the owners ride the bikes. It may cost socially…
Hi Shuichi, membership gets you 30 minutes at a time on a bike, with unlimited use as long as you keep each use under 30 minutes. The high charges for times beyond that are to encourage rapid turnover of the bike so people don’t hold onto a bike all day parked inside of an office, for example.
The daily use fee seems way out of step with all the Euro bikeshares I’ve used… But it makes the annual membership sound like a good deal.
Yeah, a couple of Euros over there, and even the annual memberships are substantially less than here. About par for other American programs, though.