Citi Bike Dock Issues: Need Better Reporting
I often find myself riding to stations that show available docks on the app, only to arrive and find none. Despite the app indicating available docks, the reality is often different. For instance,...
Forum Discussion
Thank you for sharing this painful experience here, th. I suspect that other Angels are just as frustrated when things like this happen. I've noticed an increase in Valet related questions in the community, and I plan to explore the overall valet x Bike Angels experience a bit more to provide recommendations or qualified feedback to the team and improved resources here for Angels.
I've also tagged this post as feedback, as we also have received critiques about the ease of reporting issues with a bike, dock, or station; and theoretically, these issues would affect Bike Angels more than the average rider.
I highlighted this issue because I believe it will impact the algorithm's point calculation. When no dock stations are available, the immediate demand for dock stations could range from 1 to 100. Conversely, if at least one dock station is available, we can infer there is no immediate demand, as that one would have been taken. Such incorrect inputs to the BA model will affect the point calculations of nearby stations as well, ultimately causing the system to fail in its intended function. As the saying goes, "Garbage in, garbage out."
You cannot infer anything. The algorithm changes at different times of the day and some stations show take out points when there are no bikes available. That may be because the few remaining bikes were recently removed (during the fifteen minute period) or they are discouraging drop off points in anticipation for (for example) the morning rush hour when there are large waves of drop offs in the area. Where I live the points go to neutral or take out in the late evening...even when there are no bikes to be found. There are also people who put locks on Citibikes within the docks and do not actually dock them...when I see that I purposely dock the bike so that they will not be able to continue riding the bike (which was probably registered as lost by someone else who did not properly lock it) without paying for it again. Cannot tell you how many homeless people are sleeping alongside bikes they found improperly docked. Others are locked up on city streets as well by people who originally stole or found them somewhere else.
