Jim Schutze
Audio By Carbonatix
Many things aren’t clear about Dallas’ growing hoard of bike-share bikes – how many of them there are, whether their owners will ever make money off of them or if they’re just separating Silicon Valley venture capitalists from their cash – but some things are. The bikes, as evidenced by the fact that China’s MoBike debuted in the city over the weekend, aren’t going away soon. The city’s going to regulate them by charging bike-share companies for using Dallas’ sidewalks and maybe capping the number of bikes allowed.
Most of all, it’s clear that the bikes going to end up everywhere. Sometimes, that’s good. There isn’t a place within a five-mile radius of downtown that you can’t easily grab a bike, but sometimes it isn’t good – as documented by @dallasbikemess, Dallas’ finest anonymous Instagram chronicle of bike-share’s early days and hazards.
Here are 10 of the best, or worst, bike-share failures documented by the account.
First, a bike share graveyard at the corner of Houston and Young streets downtown. (To their its, VBikes – the silver and mustard ones – picked up its bikes after this photo went up.)
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A bike in a fountain near the Comerica Building downtown.
A bike up a tree behind Fat Rabbit in Uptown.
Here’s a bike in a dumpster near the Live Oak Lofts in Deep Ellum.
For some reason, someone robbed this VBike of its plastic front wheel.
A commuter took a bike to Whole Foods in Uptown but couldn’t find a place to park.
Should the need arise, there are bike-share bikes under the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
And on the Katy Trail.
This VBikes bicycle decided to end it all in Turtle Creek.
Finally, a LimeBike on a road to nowhere – Lakeland Drive in East Dallas.
