September 4, 20136 Comments on 47 miles on a Bay Area Bike Share bike
Early this morning, Peter Colijn picked up a Bay Area Bike Share bike from the Civic Center station in San Francisco and biked 47 miles to Mountain View.
September 3, 20138 Comments on Bike share usage in the Bay Area
All bike share programs run by Alta Bike Share make their station data publicly available. For Bay Area Bike Share, you can find the real time data here. My GIS guru friend Steven Vance tells me the data is updated once every minute, and points to helpful resources like this Chicago hack night document pointing to similar APIs for Divvy, Capital Bikeshare and Hubway.
Looking at Bay Area Bike Share’s JSON datafeed it’s not too difficult to see that’s it’s an array of stations. Each element has station name and location data, the number of bikes available at that station, and the number of open slots for bike return. Oliver O’Brien used the data to include Bay Area Bike share on his real time international bike map shortly after the service began on August 29. With O’Brien’s map, you can even see usage history systemwide over the past 24 hours. He also has fancy animations showing station usage that are pretty to look at, especially on a global scale.
I’d like to know, however, how usage compares across the different cities in the Bay Area. For that, a tiny bit of extrapolation is needed, and I can use some reader help to ensure the accuracy of my information. The 700 bikes of Bay Area Bike Share are supposed to be distributed among the five participating cities. Press material from the involved agencies says we have 350 bikes in San Francisco, 130 bikes in San Jose, and 50 bikes in each of Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Redwood City.
This only adds up to 630 bikes. Does anybody know where the missing bikes are at? You might see the O’Brien graph shows the maximum number of available bike at 570 or so.
I use those numbers to calculate the number of bike in use, so the displayed data is only as good as my assumptions. If you know my data on total bikes is wrong, please let me know in the comments. During the day today, usage in San Jose has ranged from a dozen to 20 bikes in use, San Francisco has ranged from 60 to 80, Palo Alto and Mountain View has moderate use with a half dozen bikes in use at any given time.
Redwood City is an anomaly, with 51 bikes recorded as ‘available’ for most of the day. My guess: somebody brought a Bike Share bike onto Caltrain from elsewhere and parked it in Redwood City, so RWC now has an extra bike. When nobody’s riding (which seems to be most of the time), we see minus one bikes in use on the Peninsula.
The data from the bike share stations is updated once every minute. I should probably store this data over time, graph it and see what happens. Let me know if you think something like this could be useful.
Oh, I almost forgot: click here to view the real time bike usage by city for Bay Area Bike Share.
August 29, 2013Leave a Comment
This broke late last night. It’s huge.
San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr said late Wednesday afternoon his department had finished its preliminary investigation into the South of Market bicycle accident that took the life of a 24-year-old woman. The report concludes that the driver of a truck that hit Amelie Le Moullac was at fault for the fatal accident.
More in the Chron: SFPD concludes truck driver at fault in fatal SoMa bike collision.
August 28, 20131 Comment on Special Bay Bridge bike shuttle this weekend
All of the Bay Area news outlets are reporting on alternatives for travel between the East Bay and San Francisco after the Oakland Bay Bridge closes tonight at 8 PM. They’re all talking about BART, the ferries, and AC Transit transbay service, but I haven’t seen any mention of the special bike shuttle that will operate through the entire closure, though!
Caltrans operates a bike shuttle service, and they’ll continue to run this shuttle on a special schedule during the bridge closure. You pile your bike on the Caltrans trailer, pay your one dollar and hop into the Caltrans van. Because these are Caltrans workers in a Caltrans work vehicle, you’ll have your own private tour of the east span demolition work through the construction zone.
Nine round trips are scheduled for each day Thursday through Monday, and I think the trailer can fit something like a dozen bikes. Even on normal days this bike shuttle fills up, and with two hour headways and service only from 6 AM to 5 PM I can’t recommend counting on it, especially on Thursday and Friday, but it’s an alternative to think about. Show up early, cash only, bring exact change, expect to be treated like a piece of construction equipment and you’ll probably be fine.
East Bay pickup point is at MacArthur BART Station. Look for the beat up “Bicycle Shuttle Loading Area” sign. San Francisco pickup is at the Transbay Terminal, Main & Folsom.
For details, visit Caltrans District 4 bike shuttle info page.
August 27, 2013Leave a Comment
The East Bay Bicycle coalition (EBBC) invites you on a tour of the new Bay Bridge bike path, which won’t actually go anywhere — hence, the snarky “longest bike pier” appellation courtesy of the EBBC.
I think everybody in the state of California already knows the Oakland Bay Bridge will be closed over this coming Labor Day weekend so the new span can open for traffic on Monday, September 2. The new Alexander Zuckermann Bike Path will open on Tuesday, but only to a little beyond the first tower. It’s just an out-and-back trip (whee!), with no access to Yerba Buena Island because the existing Bay Bridge is in the way. After the old bridge is torn down, the path to Yerba Buena Island will open in 2015.
The 15.5 foot, three lane path will have a 15 MPH speed limit for cyclists, and the CHP says bicycle officers will patrol the sidepath to ensure the law is followed.
Note also that access to the bike path is currently through a construction site. Read the details provided by EBCC.
Speaking of the Bay Bridge shutdown and bicycle access, Caltrans will offer a special bike shuttle across the Bay Bridge even though the bridge is closed.
Tip of my hat to Rene and Serge.
August 23, 20133 Comments on Bay Area Bike Share launch events
San Jose and San Francisco will hold launch events for the Bay Area Bike Share grand opening next Thursday, August 29, 2013.
