Tag: Divvy

Divvy isn’t a real bike

January 2, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Riding on Divvy in the snow.

Divvy, for the first time in its short, seven-month existence, shut down today at 12 PM on account of the weather and keeping members and workers – who move bikes, shovel snow, and drive vans around town – safe.

Every news media in town reported on the shutdown. Chicagoist, ABC 7, NBC 5, FOX 32, Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times – you name it they had it.

But nothing has been published, except parts of this story from DNAinfo Chicago, that discusses how bicycling – whether on Divvy or your own bike – is very difficult in Chicago winters because of the poor coordination between the Streets & Sanitation and Transportation departments’ snow removal efforts, and the slow pace at which CDOT gets around to removing snow from the protected bike lanes. (I was quoted, alongside someone I recommended the author get in touch with, and we have differing views on the matter.)

In winter the protected bike lanes are the only bikeable kind of bike lane as conventional bike lanes become snow storage areas because plows can’t reach further right when there are parked cars (to avoid knocking off car mirrors).

This problem is not unique to Chicago and other cities have solved it. The cold isn’t why people in Chicago stop biking: it’s that snow and ice make it even more difficult in a region with little, separated (meaning safe and desirable) cycling infrastructure. There are climes with similar and worse winters where a large portion of people who bike in the summer keep biking in the winter. Places like Boulder, Minneapolis, Montréal, and Copenhagen.

A well-plowed, separated bike lane in a Copenhagen winter. Stranded? Put your bike on the back of a taxi (their buses don’t allow bikes).

I think it’s good that news media have recognized Divvy’s position as a transit system in the area, which they do by holding it to the same, weird standard they do Chicago Transit Authority and Metra, and posting about it frequently. When the CTA or Divvy has some marginal or perceived issue with its finances or service, an article gets written. But when it comes to bicycle infrastructure they give the city a pass where it doesn’t deserve one.

The media cares about Divvy, but it doesn’t care about bicycling. It might be the 11,000 Divvy members (more than Active Transportation Alliance or The Chainlink), however, that gets the city to kick up its bike lane snow removal efforts up a notch and I anxiously await that day.

Citibike in New York City differs slightly from Chicago’s Divvy

December 16, 2013 / / 14 Comments

I visited New York City two weekends ago for a Streetsblog writers conference. I was there for three nights and four days. To get around I put a bunch of cash on a Metrocard to use the subway and JFK Airtrain and I bought a 7-day pass for the Citibike bike-share system.

Citibike and Divvy in Chicago use nearly identical equipment from the same manufacturer, and Alta Bicycle Sharing operates both systems. Citibike sells the 7-day pass for $25, a relative steal for personal transportation costs in New York City – probably any city. Divvy only offers 24-hour and annual passes.

Citibike stations have maps of a better design that matches the walking wayfinding stanchions that New York City’s Department of Transportation has installed. The stations integrate the ad+map board onto the kiosk while Divvy has separated them. I don’t see an operational advantage to either design, but there does seem to be less material used in Citibike’s integrated design which uses one fewer solar panel.

I’ve never used Divvy’s touch-screen kiosk to obtain a single ride code as part of using a day pass so I can’t compare it to interacting with the Citibike kiosk to obtain the ten or so ride codes I needed on my trip. This was the most infuriating part of the experience, which annual members don’t experience because they have a key: the kiosk is very slow in responding to a tap and sometimes the docking bay wouldn’t accept my brand new ride code. You can’t get a replacement ride code for two minutes, preventing quick dock surfing.

The bicycles seem exactly the same: too small of a gear ratio which means a slow top speed and an easy-to-reach “over pedaling” threshold. This may be more important for New York City to have because you must climb 140 feet up the bridges to cross between Manhattan and Brooklyn or Queens while Chicago has no significant slopes. I eventually stopped using Citibike in favor of the subway and walking. I like riding trains almost as much as I like riding a bicycle and cycling in downtown Manhattan is difficult if you’re unsure of a good route to get to your destination. I prefer to not use an app for directions because of how frequently the turns appear meaning I have to inspect the app just as often to ensure I made the right one.

I’d like to see my Divvy key work in other cities where Alta operates bike-sharing. Just charge my bank card on file, applying the lowest-cost pass and letting me bypass the user agreements before purchasing a pass in another city.

That wasn’t a joyride on Lake Shore Drive

November 14, 2013 / / 2 Comments

Video starts at Ohio Street (you can see the W Hotel after the curve at Ontario Street); the camera holder and driver speak with expletives.

Craig Newman at the Sun Times is wrong about the person in this video, who was filmed riding a Divvy bike-share bike along the jersey barrier on northbound Lake Shore Drive. He blogged today:

All excellent questions. But let’s maybe simplify and throw a warning sticker on the bikes: NO RIDING ON EXPRESSWAYS

And yes, I am a consistent bike commuter who enjoys the benefits and routinely laments stupidity, four-wheeled, two-wheeled and on foot we all have to fight through daily. But come on. Lake Shore Drive?

This person didn’t want to be cycling there. There are several ways one could make the mistake of riding a bike on this roadway. And once you’re on, you’re on for good until the next exit (which in this Divvy rider’s case is 1/4 mile north from where the video was shot).

She might have known there was something called the Lake Shore Path (as some people call it) or the Lakefront Trail – she couldn’t remember which. She didn’t see any “Route X” signs, or “Interstate Y” signs.

She saw a road that looks like so many others. It’s called a drive, not an expressway (it doesn’t meet those technical standards). She most likely entered from Lower Wacker (which connects to Michigan Avenue, where many people ride Divvy against Alderman Reilly’s desire) and went up the center, northbound ramp to Lake Shore Drive.

Stony Island Avenue in Chicago. The only difference between this and Lake Shore Drive is the more frequent stopping (unless there’s congestion on LSD) and the shopping. Photo by Jeff Zoline.

It can be easily mistaken for a typical road, looking similar to the stroads near wherever she lives. Like Stony Island, Cicero, Columbus, Archer, in Chicago, or any countless “major street” in the suburbs. Maybe she comes from Roscoe Village, where Western Avenue goes over Belmont, or Bridgeport/Brighton Park, where Ashland Avenue goes over Pershing Avenue. Or some other city where regular roads cross other regular roads at different grades.


View Larger Map

Local photographer Brent Knepper tweeted that he made the mistake before.

We have a problem with our design such that the highway didn’t sufficient communicate, “No really, you shouldn’t bike here”. On the contrary, we have roads that should be shouting, “Hey, you really should be biking here!”

Maybe that’s why Netherlands makes it perfectly clear with red pavement.

Believe me, not even Casey Neistat would ride up here intentionally.

Updated with a better guess of where she entered Lake Shore Drive.

How to convert bike-share JSON data to CSV and then to shapefile

October 9, 2013 / / 6 Comments

Update January 4, 2013: The easiest way to do this is to use Ian Dees’s Divvy API as it outputs straight to GeoJSON (which QGIS likes). See below.

For Michael Carney’s Divvy bike-share stations + Census tract + unbanked Chicagoans analysis and map he needed the Divvy station locations as a shapefile. I copied the JSON-formatted text of the Divvy real-time station API, converted it to CSV with OpenRefine, and then created a shapefile with QGIS.

Here’s how to create a shapefile of any bike-share system that uses hardware from Public Bike System Co based on Montréal and is operated by Alta Bicycle Share (this includes New York City, Chattanooga, Bay Area, Melbourne, and Chicago): Continue reading

Divvy considers my suggestions in bike-share kiosk map redesign

October 8, 2013 / / 8 Comments

The new design that will appear at the newest stations first and then rolled out to all stations. 

I posted two months ago a critique of the Divvy bike-share maps, seen at 284 stations scattered around Chicago, focusing on the clutter of having so many maps (with the third being useless), unclear labels and labels that covered map objects, and the low prominence of the smartphone app and map legend. Two weeks ago the Divvy public relations manager emailed me a screenshot of the new map design and said that these points had been changed. He said they considered four of my suggestions:

  1. Make CycleFinder, the official Divvy smartphone app, more prominent
  2. Change “You are here” design to make it clear where you are
  3. Make streets and streets’ label text smaller
  4. Removed service area map and make legend more prominent

I replied to the manager and suggested that the “You are here” label be made slightly transparent to show that the road does continue beneath it.

Close-up of the original “you are here” design that covered up other objects and wasn’t centered in the walking distance circle.