- It's a cool bike, right?
Let's steal it.
(upbeat music)
So even though this isn't my bike,
I can legally and easily take it
or any of the other 249 just like it
roaming around San Francisco.
It's part of a system called Uber Bike,
and it's Uber for bikes.
Bike-sharing used to be
only in ultra-yuppie places
like Brooklyn and San Francisco,
but it'll likely hit
most major U.S. cities
before too long.
There are really two different kinds
of bike-sharing these days.
This one's pretty straightforward.
Companies just set up racks
full of bikes all over a city.
But these big racks won't fit everywhere,
so sometimes you have to walk 10 minutes
just to get a bike.
The more interesting
bike-sharing is dockless.
It's even simpler, you
ride until you're done,
leave the bike wherever, the end.
You use an app to locate
and unlock the bike,
then pay for time or get
an unlimited membership.
The Bay area is kind of an
impossible city to get around.
You get to choose between public transit,
which is probably broken,
and traffic, which is probably horrible.
Biking's usually the fastest way anywhere,
but have you seen the hills?
This bike's made by a company called JUMP
which is working with Uber
on a pilot in San Francisco.
It's actually electric,
and with this motor
making every pedal way more powerful,
it's a really easy ride.
It's really great for
riding a couple of miles
to the train station or popping
over to the grocery store.
I've found it turns a 30-minute
walk into a 12-minute ride,
and I'm only paying $2 a half hour.
Uber Bikes actually requires
you to lock the bike
to a pole or tree or
something when you're done,
using a U-lock like this one.
As long as you've put this in,
the bike thinks it's locked
and you're not paying any more.
But if you stash it somewhere
like in your garage or in this bush,
it'll be right there where you left it.
This definitely violates the
Terms of Service, by the way.
The downside of no bike stations
is that it's harder to find
a bike when you need it.
I've walked up to bikes that
turned out to be out of service
for charging or maintenance
or already reserved
and I've reserved bikes that
I then just couldn't find
on the street anywhere.
I've seen a few broken
bikes around San Francisco,
just totally stripped for parts,
and some other cities are
having even worse problems.
There's a lot for Uber
and all these other bike-sharing
companies to figure out
if they want to keep these
bikes charged and available.
Still, it's a pretty great ride,
fast, easy, and usually
ridiculously convenient
and, even though the pedals
are doing most of the work,
I still get to feel like I'm exercising.
