Available bike count hits record low

The available bike count, i.e. the number of bikes in the docks at a point in time, hit a record low for the year  -- 3011 at 5:30 pm yesterday.

May 13 maps

Some data from May 12. Most 1 am to 10 am May 13

Red icons = NotSpot stations

Blue icons = Stations that received bikes

Green icons = Stations that surrendered bikes

Wrap your brain around this one: A foldable bike helmet

An excerpt

English inventor Jeff Woolf came up with the idea of the first fold-flat bike helmet after noticing that many cyclists using European bike shares were going helmetless. He discovered that most who shunned helmets did so because they said they were too bulky to be conveniently stowed between rides.

You can breathe easy now; data feed restored

Screenshot at 10:30 am

Looks like it returned to normal at around 1 am today

We looked at the software code and this is what we found

An excerpt

...whose ravaged carcass was left abandoned outside an East Harlem apartment, has been relieved of its tires and some elements of its handlebars, which makes no sense—the tires are not only huge, they're inflated with nitrogen and are not at all a feasible substitute for standard bike tires.

What's with Mondays? Another NotSpot record

"
Set a new record Monday -- 84 NotSpots at 10 am. 75 empty and 10 full.  26% of operating stations down.

Week 18: Another maddening Monday, followed by improvement

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

WEEK 18

55

WEEK 18

44

WEEK 18

38

WEEK 18*

17

WEEK 18

24

For the week, a NotSpot score of 35, which we translate as pretty mediocre service.

The pattern that’s emerging -- miserable Mondays followed by gradual improvement across the week -- makes us think that we have been giving too much credit to the weather for spikes in ridership, leading to spikes in NotSpots.

MONDAY
WEEK 18	55
WEEK 17	59
WEEK 16	48
WEEK 15	44
WEEK 14	48
WEEK 13	20
WEEK 12	29
WEEK 11	33
WEEK 10	35
WEEK 9	39
WEEK 8	41
WEEK 7	32
WEEK 6	44
WEEK 5	30
WEEK 4	35
WEEK 3*	18
WEEK 2	22
WEEK 1*	18

Instead, as a follower of this blog commented in this post, we now suspect there’s something about weekend use that scrambles the system for Monday morning riders. We’re starting to track rebalancing. But it’ll be a cold day in Hells Kitchen before, as the follower suggests, we track weekend patterns. On Sundays, we’d rather be biking along the Hudson.

Of note:

• Record 77 empty stations at 10:30 am Monday
• First time since Week 2 that the W 54 St & 9 Ave station has not been on the Top 10 NotSpot list. Maybe the blog devoted to it is having an impact.
• Three more stations dropped out of contention for the Gaynor Award. There are now 26 remaining station’s where we’ve not recorded a single NotSpot hour.
• Average number of bikes in the docks: 3992, down more than 350 from last week.This week’s King of All NotSpots is in Chinatown. The Pike St & E Broadway station racked up 25 hours empty.