I love Bay Wheels
Bay Wheels also known as Lyft Bikes is a bike sharing program in San Francisco that offers a membership service for $14 a month if you pay for the whole year up front.
This membership includes:
- Free unlocking
- Free non e-bike rides for 45 minutes
- Reduced e-bike fee 20¢ vs 30¢
They also offer a reduced price membership.
San Francisco lends itself to being bike friendly for a few reasons:
- It's a small city - 46.87 mi²
- It has great weather - 45°F - 70°F year round
- It had pretty good bike infrastructure
- Public transit is not great - makes biking more appealing
I usually only use the non e-bikes (classic bikes) since they are already included in the cost of the membership, and because most places I am biking are relatively flat.
It has actually rained a lot quite recently so it's nice that the bikes include front, and rear fenders. The front racks are quite handy as a place to put a backpack, and it helps prevent you from accumulating back sweat. The bikes have lights, which aren't great but should help with visibility at night, and most bikes have a working bell which is really handy! All the bikes also have chain guards which makes it so you don't have to roll up your pants to keep them clean!
Of course these bikes are heavy, and you will be passed by all the other cyclists, but the lyft bikes provide options. If you want to take a bus somewhere and ride back that's possible. You could do this with your own bike, because the buses have racks, but you don't have to worry about carrying your bike around with lyft bikes. The unfortunate reality is that there is a lot of bike theft in San Francisco, so the other benefit is that you don't have to worry about your bike getting stolen.
For safety I always make sure to bring a helmet that way I feel safe biking home if I chose to bike, and if I am going to bike at night I bring / use a visibility vest.
I also have a few other psychological rationalizations for enjoying bike commuting. For one it provides free built in exercise, if I am going somewhere to do a physical activity it also serves as a good warm up. When waiting for public transportation I tend to get pretty impatient so the nice thing about biking is that there isn't a lot of waiting since you are moving most of the time. Timing wise there also seems to be more control. If I am running early I can ride at a more leisurely pace, if I am running late I can try to bike faster, and if I am really late I can opt for an e-bike.
Bay wheels has this pretty cool incentive program called bike angels (sadly I don't think it auto enrolls) that they use to help keep the racks balanced by incentivizing people when they drop off at empty stations or pick up from crowded stations. This actually has led to some obsessed people in NYC, but I don't think it's quite that crazy in SF. I have gotten e-bike credits from bike angels as well as free extensions to my membership, and recently they extended my ride limit to 60 minutes!
Bay wheels is also nice in that if there are no classic bikes at the rack they'll wave the e-bike fee. I've used this to my advantage by strategically planning a ride around an empty station where I can briefly get an e-bike from another station park it at the empty station, and then have a free ride from that point forward.
One other big way that the lyft bikes are useful is that as it gets later at night the frequency of buses decreases so the benefits of the bikes are even greater! Also when you are traveling from West to East you are usually going downhill so your commute will be considerably shorter!
Finally to illustrate this I wanted to give an example. This is actually a case where the bus is faster, but if you miss the bus you have to wait about 30 minutes which is almost the entirety of the commute.
