Is Capital Bikeshare less reliable? And the rule about questions in headlines.

A real journalist once told me that the rule about questions in headlines is that the answer is always "no" or else it wouldn't be a question. Like "Is the Prime Minister dead?" would be "Prime Minister Dead" if true. 

Which brings us to today's Washington Post article "Is Capital Bikeshare becoming less reliable? Some users grow frustrated with glitches." Which is frustrating because I'm not sure where the article is coming from. There's not a new survey or a FOIA of CaBi's complaint system or any fact to build on. There are just some examples of people complaining and the statements of some frequent users. The only measurable facts come from CaBi

Capital Bikeshare said there have been isolated station outages but no widespread problems. The bike network did, however, have a significant software glitch last month that affected about 10 percent of its stations. Capital Bikeshare officials said operations returned to normal within two days.

On a recent day, 99 percent of the system’s 532 stations were fully operational, a program spokesman said, noting that a handful of stations could have been undergoing maintenance.

So it would seem that the answer here is also "no". They counterbalance "someone tweeted about a problem" with CaBi statistics showing nothing unusual. Is ridership down? Are there more bikes out of commission? I feel like that information is publicly available. I mean there could be a reliability program, but you won't be any closer to knowing it after reading this article. 

I've not noticed any problems. Yes, they moved my station a block away for construction. Sometimes stations are blocked or empty. And sometimes I can't get all three numbers on they keypad to work so that I can unlock a bike; but none of that has occurred with any greater frequency. 

The system IS getting older. The oldest stations are coming up on 9 years old. I'm not sure when they will start replacing them, but I'm pretty sure that average station age has been going up since day 1 and will continue to go up for some time now. So, I expect there to be more technical issues with each passing day, at least until equilibrium is met.

Other news:

If I didn't mention it, Motivate, the company that operates CaBi, was bought by Lyft and Jump was bought by Uber. Both of those stories are from last year. 

Also, CaBi is going to increase the number of e-bikes in its fleet from 100 to 600 real soon, giving them more e-bikes than Jump; and "The District is also planning to launch an adaptive Bikeshare program that would make recumbent tricycles, hand tricycles and cargo tricycles available."

Also, Jeffrey Long, who died in a fatal crash in July of last year, was reportedly riding a Capital Bikeshare bike making him the first bikeshare fatality in DC.

Comments

[dynaryder]

Couldn't read the article,because I'm not dropping the ad blocker,but in my experience the answer is yes. About a half dozen times I've had issues where a station I was trying to check out of or into was off the network. I've also noticed that they're very slow to fix broken docks;I've seen it take a month to fix one at Cleve Park,and there's one out there now that's going on like its third week. I'm also completely unimpressed by their customer service. They're not based in DC,so they have no idea about the area. The last time I got dock-blocked,the rep told me to take a street that was a 3 lane one-way going the wrong way. I've also been told there wasn't a station with the name I gave them,because it fell off the network and the rep couldn't see it.

They straight up need to get their network right,and they need to improve their station maintenance and balancing outside the downtown core.

[that guy]

Actually, the answer to a headline question can be "maybe" a well as "no."

[Ren]

I thought they did a good job with the communications of the stations outage issues. I also think the docks outage issue is annoying. I would like to see more metrics on the % of time that stations are full/empty. Bike angels has helped but perhaps it should be tweaked.

[Bayley Vanderpoel]

I never have any problems checking out bikes using the app.

For non members, they need to use the kiosk interface, which is terrible and needs to be replaced desperately. I think it would drive away would be riders.