[HN Gopher] A Gripe about the Los Angeles Metro Bike App ___________________________________________________________________ A Gripe about the Los Angeles Metro Bike App Author : polalavik Score : 38 points Date : 2022-04-14 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (veryla.io) (TXT) w3m dump (veryla.io) | renewiltord wrote: | It would be nice if these were built with public APIs so that | alternative chromes could be built around those. But the same | factors that make the apps shitty make the APIs shitty, I | suppose. | BHSPitMonkey wrote: | > 2. Why do I need to purchase a pass at all? | | > In an ideal world, where things work like standard tech that | already exists, I would attach a credit card, walk up to a bike, | and get automatically charged for unlocking it/riding it. I'm | trying to give you my money, Los Angeles! | | For the same reason any other business offers a discount for | buying in advance / in bulk: "Revenue today" is more valuable to | a seller than "a little revenue today, and maybe a little more at | a later date". | nullrecursion wrote: | It's buggy and doesn't work well because people who have no idea | how software works are in charge of managing software projects. | There's a good book titled "Power to the public" that goes into | this phenomenon in-depth and explains why most government | software projects end up being dumpster fires. | Melatonic wrote: | It is definitely a bit of a pain to use and I have had issues | with the bikes not being maintained. That being said its | relatively easy to just switch to another one. | | Much bigger problem in my opinion is that while the Metro lines | are rapidly expanding they have very poor bicycle support. There | is almost no space for bicycles and even on the cars that do have | space it very quickly gets taken up by other people. | asdff wrote: | There are some bike rooms but not nearly enough imo. Every | station should have a perfectly safe place to stow a bike where | it can't be robbed. | blululu wrote: | This app is super buggy. The UX has so many glitches (engineering | failures). | | Probably the biggest UX snafu that I found is that one can unlock | a bike across town by mistake and then get billed $2000 for it | getting lost/stolen. Take what Lyft did and copy that. | | This is an app that is used by a lot of tourists - many of whom | have minimal English skills. The UX failures are embarrassing. | Whoever did this should be held responsible for breaking their | SLA. | clairity wrote: | as crappy as the app is, using a tap card on subscription | usually works like a charm (although bike return doesn't always | register perfectly, creating overbilling issues that customer | service does resolve for you). | polalavik wrote: | It feels like the whole thing was built by an intern over the | course of one summer. Realistically, the city is probably | paying an uncompetitive wage in a very competitive market and | thus hiring less-than-competent engineers to service millions | and millions of people. | 999900000999 wrote: | Or they contracted it out to an agency which then assigned | someone to do whatever they could in 2 weeks. | | React Native says web developers are automatically highly | qualified app developers. | calsy wrote: | What makes app developers so special? The only extra | requirement is that you don't break the rules of | Apple/Google's sandbox play area, else you can release | whatever garbage you want. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-14 23:01 UTC)