I attended a session on social bicycle lead by Ryan Rzepecki founder of SoBi. Bike sharing is the new hot topic in transportation. SoBi has created a more cost effective means of deploying bike share at a cost of $1100.00 per unit compared to $5000.00 per unit of a rack system deployment. Each bike has a integrated GPS, mobile communications, and secure lock. Technology aside the system operations employs a credit system for users that bring bikes located outside the defined bike share network back into the network to further reduce operational costs.
This system will be more affordable and scalable than existing bike share systems and can be deployed in a wider range of settings – small cities, universities, and even corporate campuses. SoBi will allow a user to find and unlock bikes using a mobile phone and provide a viable public transportation alternative.
The SoBi team is currently prototyping the lock box design which we will test in New York City this winter.
Follow this link to learn more
SoBi Hardware – Software Integration from Ryan Rzepecki on Vimeo.