Over the past year, sharable bikes have become a huge thing in my home of San Francisco. It started with the bikes you can rent by the hour from Ford, I think, but then quickly expanded to a zillion other options ranging from Jump bikes to Bird and Lime scooters.
As a local with my own bike, all of these annoy me a good deal (especially the scooters that are either mowing people down on the sidewalk or being left in the middle of that sidewalk once people are done with them).
That said, if you’re traveling somewhere where you do need a short-term mode of transportation, then finding a sharable bike can definitely come in handy. Figuring out what’s available where you are, and where those docks are for the bikes, can sometimes be a bit challenging. When you’re talking about bikes and scooters than can be left anywhere, it gets even more challenging.
Citymapper recently rolled out an update to its app that can help you find the nearest deckles bike or electric scooter near you.
When you launch the app, you already had buttons to search for All transportation types as well as by specific subway, train, or bus lines. Now there’s a bike button as well that you can integrate into your “all” search or run a specific bike-related search.
When you tap on that Bike button, the app will show you every bike that’s near you. In the image below, it’s showing “JUMP” bikes near me which are the deckles kind people can leave everywhere, as well as “Bay Area Bike Share” which are those Ford bikes I mentioned earlier.
Tapping on bike sharing docks will let you know how many bikes are still available there. For the Jump bikes I can see what their battery percentage is. That way I don’t waste my time walking to a bike that’s about to run out of juice when I could walk a block further and get one that’s fully charged.
The feature is available in a number of major cities, and can be a great way to see what’s available near you quickly without having to download a bunch of different apps.