Points distributions
I live and mostly bike in Oakland, CA.
many days there are few points to be had anywhere. Contrast to San Francisco where there’s a points available everywhere. This hasn’t always been the case — and I assume there is various attempts to balance the algorithm, and that overall traffic numbers drive that
One suggestion which might help a little bit is that stations with 1 or fewer open docks should always get extra points for taking something away. And completely empty stations should always offer extra. A full station are no bikes mean that someone isn’t going to land their bike there or even use a bike
i have had many occasions where i’ve opened up a dock only to have it immediately filled. When points were distributed differently, I might go out of my way to help out. But with just 1 point on offer, I don’t.
This should be a baseline not algorithmically determined, if you trully want to incentivize people helping out.