Bay Wheels

Been using Bay Wheels since it’s inception in SF. When Motivate ran the program the bikes we’re maintained well. Since Lyft took over the quality of breaks, batteries, and overall bikes have gone down month over month. My biggest frustration recently is they’re promotion of the new annual membership program. I have tried signing up multiple times through the app using Apple Pay, but it won’t register the membership or accept my payment. When I reached out to support they said use the website and that they wouldn’t refund the past few rides I paid for since attempting to sign up for an annual membership. This is clearly Lyft squeezing every dollar and trying to circumvent the App Store fees.

I use Bay Bikes every single day, usually 3-4 times per day. The old version of this app displayed so much more key information, making my morning search for a bike easy and predictable. The new version no longer allows me to see at a glance how much battery charge a parked bike has. I almost always need a bike that’s near-to-fully charged, as I ride fairly long trips. Sure, you can select a bike and then see the charging/mileage range info at the bottom of the screen, but it was so much easier to have the green charging bar as an instant guide. Also, the way the rack inventories are displayed no longer allows you to instantly see how many e-bikes are among the total number of available bikes. Like the clunky workaround for the disappeared battery charge bar, you can select the rack and get a detailed breakdown at the bottom of the screen—but why the extra step when it was formerly so easy to simply see the exact number of available e-bikes? I really enjoy my daily commutes and shopping trips on Bay Bikes—it’s one of the unexpected upsides of pandemic-reduced MUNI service. Please bring back the easy functionality of the “old” app, and you’ll make this loyal customer very happy.

Very often when the app says there are available slots in a dock you will arrive a minute later and it’s full. I’m not sure if this is a data problem or if the conditions change so rapidly. It would be useful to “reserve” a slot in a busy dock in advance so you can be sure you will have place to put it when you arrive. Also, it would be helpful to support Siri shortcuts so you can do things like set up a command to check for the availability at a specific dock. Then you could “hey Siri...” so the app can verbally confirm that there is space to park your bike at your intended destination without having to take your phone out of your pocket. If you’re wearing mic’d headphones you just ask anything. Good idea, right?