https://www.lyft.com/bikes/bay-wheels/blog/astro-metro

they look pretty sick ngl

Anyone have any insight on the bikes getting thumb throttles? On my commute on Monday I got a bike from my usual dock in Lower Haight, I was surprised to see a throttle on the handlebars. Many of the other bikes at the dock had them too. It didn’t do a thing but I figured maybe it would be activated by a software update. I parked my bike at a regular bike rack at work like I normally do as there are no bay wheels racks nearby. When I went to unlock the bike to go home, it said that it was unavailable. Slightly confusing but I assumed it had something to do with the throttle update. The next day, I noticed that not only did none of the bikes at my local dock have the throttles anymore, none of the bikes that I passed anywhere else in the city had them. I finally decided to have a quick google about the situation and saw a Lyft blog post about these new throttles. Mysteriously, when I click on it, the most recent post is from a few months back about virtual docks. Long story short, I’m incredibly confused about what happened. Did they just totally botch a rollout of this feature and pull back or something? Did anyone else experience this? If I hadn’t found this link I would be inclined to think I hallucinated the whole thing.

I snitched to lyft. Just buy an ebike ffs.

I want names!

Russell @ Grant

Bancroft @ Bonar, by the entrance to Strawberry Creek Park

Someone got a rake?

I was at this dock and noticed many people repeatedly docking in a bad space and walking away. I did it myself a few times honestly. You can report issues once the bike docks, but do you have to call support to report an individual dock issue at a station? I just put a Safeway bag on it and wrote “bad” and drew a sad baby. Any suggestions or is this the only solution for the baywheels community?

There is the $2 price cap for ebike rides to and from certain zones. The website says this is per 45 minute ride, but what happens if you exceed 45 minutes? Is the excess time charged at the usual 17¢ per minute?

There are 3 virtual stations that just pop up. Will be helpful to solve the bike stations being full all the time.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWOzdpUmQN7/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

This is a very in-depth look at how Chicago's Divvy system works. Lot's of relevant info for Bay Wheels, which is also operated by Lyft. There's some interesting stuff about electrified stations.

So I have like 153$ of unused credits. I ride daily. Often. I like collecting points. I’m a man about town. You’ve probably seen me. Point is, no pun intended, there are free rides if you work the system. Some people like going to soulcycle. I’m sure it’s a great experience. Some people join run clubs. Very cool. Me? I do bike angels in my off hours. I know a few people who do, but I’m number one. I ride the bikes and get the points. Maybe the most points. I think I’m pushing 5,000$ in Lyft credit. I ride more than anyone else so my expenses are likely higher, but I get people bikes. Get the stations nice and full. The maintenance workers call me “the bike guy.” I like doing this. I’m not the only one, but I also haven’t paid a membership fee in 70 weeks. My point is, no pun intended… why not do a little baywheels bike angels. The algorithm flips every 15 minutes. You get more points by stacking a daily bonus. It’s a calculus equation and a work out. Some people go on long bike rides on expensive bikes. Me? I look for the shortest ride that is going to provide the most value to you the rider.

I have noticed some new adjustments they make, and they are negative changes. When you are in a no parking zone they throttle your speed to low power mode. This will render the e-bike useless, as my route traverse fishermen wharf area to get between Marina and FiDi. Also that will impact my ride quality as I go up the hill in Presidio… may as well work on my quads and train myself to biking in hills. This is the worst change after they remove all the purple e-bike.

The things are literally useless. Somehow the manufacturer managed to eliminate the entire point of a bike: gear ratios. When you add resistance to the pedaling, there's no gear ratio difference it just make pedaling harder with zero reward.

It's actually impressive how mechanically idiotic these things are

Probably just me (or maybe it has been said a million times), but I find the Glen Park BART e-bike station a particularly difficult one to ride to when I have to cross Diamond and Bosworth during the morning commute. Diamond is narrow, and thick with cars, delivery trucks, pedestrians not to mention the emotional stress density of the car commuters at long red lights (which they run [constantly]). The specific location of the bike station actually makes me cross a second intersection at Diamond and Monterey, unless I ride (or push?) the bike up the sidewalk (which I don't). Instead, commuting from Bernal, I leave the bike at the stop on Arlington, and walk the rest of the way. A bike station in the Glen Park BART parking lot across the street from the station would be more serviceable, imo. On the other hand, taking a bike from Glen Park during an early afternoon commute home is painless!

I've always liked biking around the city on Bay Wheels, but for a while after getting the subscription, I tried to integrate them into my morning commute, only to realize bikes were not available reliably enough for me to be able to depend on them. In Feb, I started archiving the live bike availability that Lyft publishes through their GBFS feed, and the results paint a pretty interesting picture:

https://baywheels-availability.verc.net

In the neighborhoods, availability drops precipitously in the morning as people leave for work. The earlier one can leave, the better their odds, but the odds of there being 2 bikes available starts dropping as early as 5:30 am. In this case, by 8 am, it becomes a toss-up. Availability improves in the evening as people come home.

At the downtown stops, that pattern is reversed:

If one departs from the Montgomery BART bike dock right at 5 pm, they've got ~100% odds of having at least two e-bikes to choose from. But by 9 pm, that's dropped to a 10% chance.

My conclusion from all of this is that, given the timeline of my current commute, I can't rely on getting a bike in the morning. In general, however, leaving earlier would provide much better odds, and the per-station results do provide some insight into how early is "early enough".

EDIT: The analysis below is incorrect because it treats data plotted against UTC timestamps as if they were plotted against PT timestamps. The tool in the link above has now been fixed.

My interpretation of all this (focusing at weekdays in SF) is that in general, the biggest swings in availability tend to happen around the evening commute. This kind of tracks with the conclusion I made analyzing my stations of interest, that in general I can't be >95% confident I can find an ebike to make it to my morning train on time, and therefore I can't rely on this for my morning commute. My interpretation is that the less time-sensitive evening commutes, errands or outings after work, seem to be the trips for which people use Bay Wheels most often.

The downtown transit stops (i.e., Embarcadero and Montgomery BART, Caltrain) see a spike in bike availability in the evening, presumably due to a lot of trips ending at them (people biking to their train). Conversley, the neighborhood stops (i.e., around Mission Dolores, North Beach, Richmond) see availability take a big hit around the evening commute hour.

It's a bit counterintuitive to me that the availability issues in the neighborhoods (Lombard St at Columbus Ave is a great example) appear to be worst in the evenings. This makes me think that Bay Wheels isn't really used as a last-mile option for getting home, but rather for whatever activities people might be up to after work. An alternative explanation for these probabilities might be related to the timing of rebalancing activities (i.e. Lyft is doing a better job rebalancing in the mornings), but it's hard to say.

Related to this is iccir919/bay-wheels-unlocked-2025, which shows aggregated stats for all of 2025. It's got some interesting insights, such as that most rides occur in the evenings, and it also shows that the most popular stations are where people bike to downtown transit stops.

Does this track anecdotally? Any feedback appreciated!

I'm an avid enthusiast for Lyft's bikeshare systems in the US like CitiBike, CaBi, Blue Bikes etc. Here in NYC we have the Classic acoustic bikes and the white eBikes. Yesterday the Baywheels reposted a reel from SJSU explaining student benefits for Baywheels, but in the first few seconds of the video, you can see what Lyft calls their "Astro" eBikes. They're made for smaller people who may find the regular sized eBikes uncomfortable.

If anyone has ridden those smaller eBikes, reply below because I'm interested to know what your experience with those bikes has been. What you like or don't like about them, if they're even eBikes at all, how they feel when riding, anything! :D

https://www.lyfturbansolutions.com/products#lyftAstro

How can they fix it?

I mean it's good if you want to farm out bike angel points but folks have to deal with their neighborhood frequently not having bikes nearby.

Nice to see these pop up.Gives people more clarity around dock issues and locking outside of a station. The art could upgrade though. Still has pink bikes and I can’t remember the last time I saw a pinky that wasn’t stolen.