Pronto vs Biketown: The Northwest Bike Share Showdown

27 Replies to “Pronto vs Biketown: The Northwest Bike Share Showdown”

1. I assume this means Biketown rides are GPS tracked, whereas I think Pronto bikes are ‘dark’ between dockings, based on Pronto staff thanking me for tweeting locations of ditched bikes I’ve come across.

   1. Yes, Biketown has integrated GPS. This is a screenshot from the Biketown app.

      So far as I can tell the Pronto bikes are “dumb” save for the small battery to power the lights.

      1. The lights are not battery powered. They’re powered by a generator in the front hub.

2. I recently returned from Shanghai and Beijing, and saw a lot of new orange bikes rolling around. Unlike the PNW versions, “MoBike” is totally free-floating and work the way Car2Go does.

   They also use a uniquely designed proprietary bicycle, to help ensure bikes aren’t stolen for parts. No chain – just an internal drive mechanism. I did not get a chance to ride one, however.

   Check this article out by googling: Bike-Share Schemes Test Shanghai’s Ethics

3. I have internal hub gearing and can shift just fine while pedaling. I do so dozens or hundreds of times a day.

   Bike share will never succeed with mandatory helmet law. It never has, anywhere. It has succeeded everywhere that doesn’t have mandatory helmets.

   1. Which make/model? I have a Shimano Nexus 7 on a bike and shifting while pedaling usually works. I imagine Pronto is using something other than Shimano. It’s most noticeable when riding up a hill and the grade changes; you keep pedaling to continue moving forward but it gets harder and harder because you’re in the same gear until you stop pedaling.

   2. Just like car rentals, motorcycle rentals and boat rentals have failed because of requiring the renter to also rent seatbelts, helmets and life jackets. Get real.

      Pronto is failing because they released it in downtown, which is shitty to bike in for the most seasoned cyclists and the U-District, which is small enough that walking will beat undocking and docking and bike any day. Add to the fact that the only two zones are linked by Eastlake, which I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemies.

      The anti-helmet crowd would LOVE to tie Pronto’s failures to helmets, but they can’t. I see people on Prontos without helmets all the time. The bikes seem to operate perfectly.

4. The flexibility of a free-floating system seems like a huge improvement. It would also come with a data advantage: you can look at where people are locking bikes to normal racks to figure out where you need to build stations.

   I’d like to see electric assist, too. The price of electric assist bikes is plummeting, and Seattle’s got more than its fair share of steep hills. A lot more people would be interested in riding if it wasn’t so hard to get a heavy bike-share bike up hill X.

   1. Due to the necessary charging infrastructure it’s hard to combine the two :(

5. Good article! A different tack I would have taken would be to have the prices for Pronto “with” sales tax, as that’s a part of the price and makes the two numbers comparable, whereas Portland has no sales tax (I’m assuming there’s no special tax there for bike sharing). Then, the Seattle number wouldn’t require mental math or a calculator to compare those, then *- Including state sales tax.
   I also like that you tried out the app, an important part of the consumer experience

   1. I do think it’s silly for Pronto memberships to be charged sales tax. It feels almost like trying to collect sales tax on bus fares. Even Uber is somehow not subject to sales tax (although it probably should be).

      1. It’s because it’s a rental or lease, and bike rentals are charged sales tax much like car rentals are. It’s a choice of the system to determine whether they disclose sales tax or not on rental. B Cycle systems tend to have sales tax included (i.e. Los Angeles, Madison – although Austin is now quoting tax exclusive prices) while Motivate and SoBi systems tend to be tax exclusive.

6. Just spent the weekend in Portland. Anecdoctally, it struck me how well-used their bike share is. I’d never seen Pronto bikes roaming around Seattle. I also got to use the system once and agree that it’s generally a better experience than Pronto for the reasons listed in the article.

7. The on-board computer design of Biketown looks to have merit. But it certainly seems to present the risk of failure and frustrating problems as the system ages. I wonder about the vendor’s track record with this system. Pronto’s station-based design is certainly less flexible, but could be significantly enhanced by both increased station density (for a more circular station layout) and electric assist. I imagine both ongoing expense and the requirement of a helmet solution made the station-based design a must for Pronto. It can and does work in plenty of places. We just need supporters and a willing SDOT/City Council.

8. Portland had a pure honor system bike share plan in the early 1990s. I went there by Amtrak in 1995, wondering if I would see any of the yellow-painted bikes. I wasn’t planning on using them, and it was raining, but it might be fun to try them out. I only saw one of them all day, and it was chained up. So this will be Portland’s second go around with bike sharing.

9. I was in Vancouver this weekend and nearly every Mobi station we saw was packed with customers. It’s pricing structure, I seem to recall, is quite reminiscent of Pronto, but the big difference is the sheer number of stations and the general flatness of the part of Vancouver where we were. It was about a mile from our hotel to this bagel place we went to and half a mile from there to a park. There was a station across from our hotel, another station half a mile away, another one right at the bagel place and another one at the parking lot for the park.

   Of course, all of this was matched by great cycle tracks in between.

   I’m sorry, but Pronto’s problem is far, far more Seattle’s topography, the poor layout and coverage of the station network and the general lack of biking infrastructure in the places people might want to bike in the city than the helmet law. That’s an excuse.

10. Looking at both Portland and Seattle’s bike share and I wonder why in the world would anyone use them. In Paris there’s 23,000 bikes at 1800 stations. Each station is only 300 meters apart. The cost of a day pass is under 2 euros. A 7 day pass is 8 euros. If you sign up for a year you get it for less than 3 euros per month! Students get a month for 1.50 euros. You can ride for the first 30-45 minutes and never pay.

    We charge almost as much for a helmet as they charge for a month of usage. If you paid the annual membership fee and the usage fees and a helmet and rode it to work every day you could have either just bought your own bike.

    I just don’t know who the target audience is for Pronto besides people lacking math skills. Maybe it’s people who don’t have space to store a bike.

    1. Helmets are included with Pronto’s annual membership. If you’re paying for the annual membership fees and usage fees and helmets, you’re doing it wrong. Which means you’re only spending $85-95 a year. You’re not going to get a very good bike for that price, and even if you did, you’ll have to maintain it. Pronto maintains the fleet to ensure every in-service bike is in working order.

       I still own a bike but only use it when my trips are long, going out of the service area or I’m looking for a lighter bike to ride (these rental bikes are durable, not nimble). Most of my Pronto trips are one-way, which is impracticable with bike ownership.

       Finally, Pronto provides a ton of peace of mind. Once you dock it, it’s no longer your responsibility. If someone steals the bike there will still be plenty of other bikes available to get you where you need to go.

11. Location. Pronto is failing because of location, not helmets, not weather, not any other excuse people can come up with. Downtown zone is not some place people want to bike, U-District zone is small enough that it is quicker to walk than to bother with Pronto and the linkage between the two is terrible at best and difficult to make it in the 30 minute time limit. Instead of extending south from the U-District, they could have considered extending west and east along the BGT and probably escaped their financial woes. It’s flat, safe and there’s plenty to do from Golden Gardens to Magnuson.

12. I won’t pretend to be an expert on Portland’s geography, but with a semi free-floating system the station siting is less important.

    It would be nice to see it extended a bit further east, but the core of the activity areas are covered pretty well. The contrast on SE Division, Belmont and Hawthorne east and west of Chavez Blvd (formerly 39th) is pretty severe in terms of overall activity level. Even so, the area east to about 50th seems to me as though it has enough activity to support more stations out that way.

    It would also be good to see some expansion into Sellwood. It’s about as close as Portland comes to a Burke-Gilman trail between there and downtown Portland. It’s a decent trail, but with nowhere near the activity level along it as the Burke-Gilman does.

    At the same time, you can’t cover the whole area at once. It’s a good start.

13. I’d argue the reasons for Pronto’s failure – in the order of impact – are challenging topography, poor station network, and lastly, helmet law.

    My argument for topography is based on the way this has shaped Seattle’s cycling culture into a very gung-ho spandex clad racing-bike race-all-the-time mentality, not the easy-going cycling culture one finds in less topographically challenging cities, such as Portland.

    Another interesting comparison is Melbourne and Seattle. Melbourne is flat, but has a helmet law, and bike sharing is struggling there.

    1. Somewhere in the mix should be “big money sponsor”. Let’s not forget that the e in Biketown is supposed to be pronounced as that makes the corporate sponsorship more obvious.

14. I haven’t used either of these systems, but I imaging that either 7 or 8 speeds would be miles better than the 3-speed bike I got from Omaha’s Heartland B-cycle system.

15. Pronto’s cost is often justified by backers because it helps take cars off road. I don’t see evidence that it works in that fashion here in Seattle, and not much evidence to think it could.

    If we want to make more bike commuters we’d be better off subsidizing the purchase of bikes for commuters who can’t afford them.

    If the city thinks they want a shiny object of a program to show how ‘world class’ and ‘progressive’ the city is, then let’s keep pronto. But fund it thru a tourism tax or something. Not from general revenue.

    The city should not be in the bike rental business – it’s a boondoggle and ineffective.

16. I actually made it a point, as a visitor to downtown, to find a pronto bike at UW and ride down to Pike’s Place market. Easy…right?

    No.

    First off, we had to pull up a map on our smart phones as to where the pronto bikes might be hiding. Were they at the station with the other bikes? Nope. That would make entirely too much sense.

    We walked about 1/4 of a mile to the pronto station. At which point, I was prompted no less than 2 times with legalize. Where you helmet yo! (whatever). Oh, here is a 16 page legal form to read, yo! (sure).

    Almost every bike had sticky hand grips..due to a choice of cheap rubber. I have ridden bikes…a lot…and never one so slow. Or should I say, several so slow. The ride was so utterly slow…I had to switch out twice for fear of being penalized for holding a bike over 30 minutes.

    30 minutes!

    I learned after the second change to eyeball the bikes hoping for a bike that was fully functional and not making funny sounds (crank brackets, gears).

    Let’s talk about the helmet.

    They require you to “rent” one. Hmm…I have a larger than 60cm head…so that’s out. Turns out, the helmet fits nicely into the basket. Rode past state patrol cop and a city cop just like that…..they didn’t care.

    The city has done little to point a bike rider towards real bike lanes. Google lists arterial streets as bike ways.

    The one plus side, the waterfront pronto is located under the Alaskan way viaduct across several lanes of traffic…nowhere near the actual waterfront (outside crab pot).

    Bottom line…the bikes are slightly above department store. The stations sometimes are placed ok…sometimes…not so much (UW station). I got the best workout due to bike being 90 pounds and each having a drag coefficient worthy of a semi truck.

    Never, ever…again.

    I ride 2-3 times per week .

    Let’s talk about the price. $8 for 24 hours.

    BUT

    2 dollars if you keep one of their hotly demanded bikes for more than 30 minutes.

    What the price should be is $2…for 30 minutes and $3 for an hour…and so on.

    One more thing…you can’t lock the bike up..because it has no integrated lock like the Portland Bikes do.

    1. Were they at the station with the other bikes?Your trip must’ve been a few weeks ago; the station has since moved to the station.

17. I’m a little late to the party but Portland’s system is run by Motivate, it just uses bicycles from Social Bikes.

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