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Montreal's Public Bikes To Use Web, RFID, Solar
Ian Lamont writes "Montreal is preparing to launch a Web- and RFID-enabled public bike system that allows residents and visitors to rent bicycles at special depots scattered throughout the city. Using a Web site, riders can check out a real-time inventory of available bicycles at the depot locations. At the depots, a solar-powered base station will process credit cards or member cards. The bike docks use RFID, and the system is supposedly easy to install and maintain. A pilot program will launch in September with four bike depots."
Putting people on moving vehicles and combining it with stuff that takes their attention off of steering it...
ah huh, and I'm sure they won't use the tags to track anyone ever. Nope, I mean all they have is their first and last name and probably address too from the credit card data and a unique identifier to identify them. I mean they're not going to put sensors everywhere in the city to track them everywhere but I bet they could sell the data of routes people take and sell the stats to businesses. That or follow "suspicious" people who haven't even committed a crime.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
they should just have capacitors (or whatever) on/in the bikes that store up energy whenever brakes are used, then when the bike is returned, all the bikes all stored energy can be released back onto the grid, perhaps which could then be transfered as credit or whatever and give a discount for renting the bike.
heck, maybe if u ride enough you could make money by way of power generation
yes thats all probably ridiculous, but it's 3am so idfc lol
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
I'm just guessing, but the bicycle may not be the best means of transportation in the winter, particularly in Montreal.
It sounds awfully like... exactly the same thing. But in Paris you can use them 12 months a year. In Montreal, as soon as the ground ice-freezes or more than 50cm of snow accumulates, the bikes will basically become useless.
-> http://www.en.velib.paris.fr/comment_ca_marche
Julien
Rent Bike.
Ride down hill to other depot.
Take bus back to original depot.
Repeat as needed.
Exactly. Looks like Montreal is getting yet another system similar to Paris Velib, Barelona Bicing, Stockholm City Bikes, and others... Except this one will be buried in snow from November to April.
Yes!, and then lock the doors on the bus and drive to the nearest prison! all the non-criminal will be on the bikes! wow! great plan!
Am I the only one who read the title and pictured futuristic solar powered electric bicycles with web browsers attached? I think it's more the bike system that's using Web, RFID and solar...
And all they have to do, with their little computerized system, is to make sure that the supply is low enough at key spots to keep the rental price high. What a scam.
By the way, someone mentioned that Montreal keeps its road plowed. That does not much matter, since a snow plow often makes the road slicker than leaving some powder snow alone. On the other hand, I do not believe that there are any logical objections to using bicycles that have walnut-shell or metal-studded tires.
Check in www.bicing.com. Pretty cool, pretty functional. I'm a happy user since more then 13 months... :)
We have had this in sweden for a while now. It seems to be pretty successful. I have not used it, as i have my own bike, but i see a lot of people ridnig around on them.
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Like the solar powered parking ticket machines, which have just enough power to take your money or card, but then run out just before printing the ticket?
why wouldn't people just use their own bike? I'm not sure about everywhere else but a lot of buses do have bike racks on them. Bikes are also aloud on the trains where i live, provided that you have a bike pass.
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
Have you seen how successful the public bicycle system is in Paris? It's a generation older in terms of tech, but it continues to be a great success. Being able to simply grab (rent) a bike and ride the 15-20 blocks you might need to travel, doing this above ground in a physically exhilarating and liberating fashion (compared to a bus/metro/taxi)... this is all most excellent.
The geek criticism of this technology for its "privacy concerns" and for its "technological weak points" is probably all logically sound. But the very same people who are making these points are also very likely the most keyboard-bound (by habit) people. They are perhaps failing to see the practical gains here, in favor of racing to point out academic faults. To them I say:
Dude! If ever anyone needed a digital rent-a-bike to get you off your ass, it's you! Who do you think they are making this for? It's not the carousing moron with bad credit and too many kids. It's not Dr. MD-PhD who drives to his practice to check his schedule for next week. It's you, pal.
So they keep bicycles by each door. They're very inexpensive single-speed bikes, with flags on tall poles. They're cheap enough that they don't worry about them being stolen.
And no, I don't work there - I've visited a couple times.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
...is being developed by Prof Bill Mitchell at MIT. This link is to a radio interview with him in March.
Paris wasn't the first city in France to implement those (unless you count the RATP short-lived bike rental service, with probably a total of fifty bikes in the entire city at its peak). Lyon at least predated Vélib with its Vélov system. Yeah, dunno why the apostrophe trend.
The project currently being pushed by Delanoë (mayor of Paris) is also noteworthy : the goal is to have the same system as Vélib, but with cars. Dunno if it will work as well, though, since you still need a license to drive them (at least I hope).
This
Ah, no thanks, especially considering the air pollution you get in a densely-populated city like Paris with all that automobile, truck and bus traffic. I'll wait until every vehicle on Paris streets are either Euro 6 emissions-compliant, run off natural gas, are hybrids/plug-in hybrids and/or all-electric.
Well, reducing traffic pollution is kind of the entire point of the Vélib system, isn't it ? I'd say bikes are Euro 6 emissions-compliant. And natural gas is a hazard in closed car parks, of which there are quite a few in the city.
Oh, and the buses are already going towards low-emission.
This
Exactly. Looks like Montreal is getting yet another system similar to Paris Velib, Barelona Bicing, Stockholm City Bikes, and others... Except this one will be buried in snow from November to April.
Trondheim, Norway had a similar system when I was there in 1998, not sure if it is older than that.At 63.4 degrees North, I think those would also also qualify for the winter part.
I lost my sig.
We have similar systems in most of our cities:
CastellÃn de la plana: www.bicicas.es
The site couldn't handle the traffic. Here is the google cache: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:l7XcvweMq9QJ:www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/21/montreal-launches-public-bike-system+montreal+public+bikes+standard&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Having lived in Montreal for many years I can tell you their so-called great system sucks.
The average road size in downtown Montreal is two lanes plus one parking lane. Parking is already impossible to find and one out of the two driving lanes is almost always blocked by construction, delivery trucks or some driver taking a left turn. So you're already down to one usable lane.
Now these idiots come along and pave *permanent* bike lanes (enforced with a concrete separator) in a country that sees Winter 3/4th of the year. Goodbye parking space, goodbye driving space. To make matters worse I've seen quite a few bikers continuing to use the roads and avoiding the biking lane altogether.
This is one of the dumbest idea I've heard of in a long while!
As alluded to in the parent, Montreal this past year devoted an entire lane of a one-way street called de Maisonneuve to a bike path and removed some crucial parking space.
But many idiot cyclists don't use it. They continue to bike on Sherbrooke, one block north, which for most of its length is only one and a half lanes of traffic each way plus a parking lane.
That's bad enough, but the idiot cyclists ignore traffic regulations like stop signs and red lights, so you have all this vehicle traffic that has to pass the same God-damned cyclist three times in the squeeze.
Instead of making it easier for Montreal cyclists, they should ban them.
The same thing happens on the Plateau. I used to live on Duluth and you'd have all these cyclists running through the stop signs on Duluth instead of using the bike path on Rachel, a block north.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
Montreal has snow storms in April and sometimes even in May. And in November, it falls below freezing in the evening.
Not too mention the heavy rains in the fall and the spring.
We had about 50-75% days of rain in the spring.
This month of June we've had rain almost every day.
I know, my kids have been asking to take their bikes out!!
This is a cute idea that will only serve a dense area population of eco freaks: the uber chic Le Plateau Mt Royal, which cachet was created by the musicians and artists and hippies who lived there and have been replaced by bottled water carrying
yuppies.
Montreal has an amazing metro which can more or less take you anywhere in the larger core *not the outlying anglo suburbs), I dont think this will matter much apart from Mt Royal street to Avenue Des Pins to Parc Lafontaine.
There were a few failed car services like that and the plateau is the only place this worked since the parking situation there is horrible and most professionals dont have cars, taking the metro or taxi.
Maintains the bikes? I mean, come on. Besides normal bike troubles like flats, you're dealing with dynamo hubs, full-coverage fenders, internally geared hubs, and all manner of other gizmos that are liable to break easily. I worked at a shop that rented bikes once, and anything more complex than a coaster-braked singlespeed came back needing some kind of work.
Furthermore, what's with the bike that they're showing off? is there an actual prototype? It doesn't seem to have been designed by someone who has worked extensively with bikes. If the chain guard is integrated into the frame, how do you get the crank off to work on the bottom bracket? If a brake lever breaks, do you replace the handlebars? And do they really believe that anyone can fit the bike by adjusting the seat?
They don't send the bikes off with any tools, even a flat repair kit.
If you want to rent bikes without any maintenance, use a steel-framed singlespeed with a sealed BB and hubs, a coaster brake, sealant-filled tubes, and kevlar-belted tires. send it out with a seatpack containing a spare tube, a CO2 inflator and a multitool. Done. No electronics, no cables, no gizmos.
http://worksmancycles.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/cruisers.html -- there's a good place to start.
The niggers from North Montreal will steal them all.
We've got something similar here in Buffalo. Members can check out a bike from the web site and return it to any of the "hubs" around town, and then check it back in.
The biggest thing people always worry about is theft, but since the work is all done by volunteers and the bikes are all donations or cheapies from police auction, someone would have to steal a half-dozen bikes a year to eclipse their $15 membership fee.
--saint
Perhaps you have never ridden a bike in the winter, which is why you're such an expert on it? I've never had my wheels "suddenly just jerk sideways". If you have, maybe you're going too fast for the conditions.
Also, you actually have to dress as though it's a lot warmer when winter cycling, because the physical activity makes you very warm very fast. Yes, you need to cover your hands and feet, but there are plenty of ways to do that. I use winter boots, and they work just fine.
But thanks for the FUD.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I was loving this until I saw the September launch date. WTF? Here, folks, have some bikes for 45 days. Then we'll see you in six months when the snow melts.
Nice to see this for next year, though. Traffic is awful.
...that this kidn of system relies on the goodwill of its users. No matter how complicated you make the system, someone's bound to mess with it some time.
Here at Barcelona the "bicing" system is quite succesful, but we have a little problem: our city is lower at the seafront and higher when you go away from the sea. Consequence: it's very difficult to find a bike in the "high" districts, because people uses them to go "downwards" and ther returns using the underground or the bus, The bikes end in the "lower" part of the city! There is a service to "balance" and redistribute the bicicles all around the city, but it's unefficient, understaffed and slow. Any town which is going to implement a similar system should take into account this aparently stupid problem!
...I was more of a fan of Josh Kinberg's Bikes Against Bush, though the prototype was confiscated by the police (and its creator jailed for a few days).
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"Thighs, mostly, and momentum, dumbass. I, too, have mobility issues (compartment syndrome, post necrotic right leg, no extensors on right leg, etc)."
So what you're saying is if you were a horse, you'd be put down. Too bad you're not a horse then...
"and walking several miles used to result in a squishy sound from a right sneaker full of blood"
You're lying for effect and it's as disgusting as your crippled body.
"What do you know, eh?"
How to walk normally. Eat it.
"Live and learn, or, continue to live and take up space"
Funny coming from your useless crippled ass. Maybe you should have figured out how to walk without causing a "SNEAKER FULL OF BLOOD".
"Clueless toad."
At least you signed your post.