Bike Ride
=========

From April  16 there is a  "shared bikes" service in  my city. Actually
there was something during last year  but it was available only in very
limited area too far from here.

This year  there is a  NextBike company [1]  which offers the  bikes in
several places  inside university  campus. They  are also  available on
many places in the city, too.

From my point of  view there are some good news and  some bad ones. The
good ones first:

* First  15 minutes are  free. My  ride to work  is 12 minutes  (plus 4
minutes to get to the bike parking place). Opposite direction is not so
good:  in theory  it's just  9 minutes  but there  are consistently  no
available bikes in afternoon.

* The  bike has some ability  to run uphill. It's  actually pretty good
for a dedicated city bike.

* It is easy to leave the bike anywhere - one just has to lock it.

* The  Android app (which  is necessary to  lend a bike)  is relatively
intelligent - if the phone/tablet has no  camera or if it cannot scan a
QR code then it  is possible to enter a bike  number manually. So there
are no limitations by bat visibility or hardware limitations.

And the bad news:

* Android  only control. One needs  an Android app and  data connection
(or WiFi). There  is a possibility to call technical  support to unlock
the bike without the Android app but  it is a bit impractical (and only
possible between 9am and  6pm). The app works on my  Gemini PDA but I'm
WiFi-only device so I can only  connect inside the university campus as
there are near no free WiFi hotspots  in the city (there were big plans
about free  WiFi on  bus stops  but there is  still almost  nothing). I
don't use  mobile data at  all (my Punkt phone  cannot use them)  and I
don't think that  it makes sense to  have a phone with data  just to be
able to sometimes lend a bike...


I will probably  have to invest some  money to new tyres for  my bike -
it's easier to  ride than these city  ones and it also  can run without
Android phone and mobile data...



References:

[1] http://netxbikeczech.com