SoBi isn’t some up and coming New York City neighborhood (at least not yet). SoBi is actually a new program from New York City urban planner Ryan Rzepecki called Social Bicycles – or SoBi for short. It is a bike-sharing system that uses “smart” bikes rather than “smart” stations, so that each bike has an onboard GPS, cellular transmitter and electronic lock that allows people to find and unlock the bikes using their smartphones.
The idea here is that special docking stations and central places to herd bikes are not needed. There would thus be no home base for the fleets, and instead just “hub” areas where the bikes could be ridden. Take the bike out of the hub and pay a fee, return the bike later in the day to the hub area and you receive a credit. While still a concept, the idea is one that has promise. Riders would use smartphones to locate and reserve a bike, and would have 15 minutes to walk to that location, where they could unlock the bike from a built-in keypad. Bikes could be ridden, and even locked up for 15 minutes periods.
So in other words, it could be good for short errands, but wouldn’t be a commuting device – at least it wouldn’t be one riders could count on for commuting, at least not until a large fleet was developed. But it is an interesting first step towards bike sharing.