No part of the bike share system in Chicago is confusing at all, fortunately
We’ve written text before about Divvy, the bike sharing network in Chicago, mostly about the time when they had a single red bike in a sea of blue ones and made everyone constantly try to find & ride it. Since then, many things have happened. We need to talk.
The two biggest things: Divvy got bought by Lyft, and Divvy got e-bikes. The two, apparently, are related. There are ramifications for all of this. I recently visited Montréal, and their bike sharing system looked materially identical to Divvy’s, only it had effectively no e-bikes, was not privatized, and the regular bikes worked more consistently.
There is no more red Divvy. There are now three kinds of Divvy: blue, which are regular non-powered bikes that weigh about 40 pounds; black, which were the first generation of e-bikes that work well enough and weigh about 60-70 pounds; and white, which are the latest generation of e-bikes and easily top 90. The white Divvy looks like it belongs in WALL•E, and my friends & I have taken to calling them the Space Divvy, both because they are from space and so hard to find that they may as well be aliens.
The less great
The red Divvy is gone, and god is dead.
Blue Divvys are not, in fact, good. They are heavy, slow, and maintained poorly. It is very possible to get a busted bike straight off the rack, report it, and find the same bike sitting there for public use a day later. If you’re using your own bike, you will see a blue Divvy a block ahead and groan, because you know they will be going half as fast as you, and passing them will be a pain. As a result, the e-bike system is effectively the whole system.
As Lyft added more e-bikes to the system, they started pulling out the original bike docks, which take up a lot of space and use electricity, and replacing them with long racks for their e-bikes. At the same time, because blue Divvys lack an internal cable lock, you can’t lock them to the new racks. And you can only charge black & space Divvys at the old racks. And the map on your phone doesn’t distinguish clearly between old & new racks. And if you have a normal bike, it’s strongly discouraged to lock it to a Divvy rack. I have not heard of any cut locks, but I wouldn’t be surprised. So you can clip a Divvy anywhere, but you can’t clip a bike to a Divvy rack. Cool.
Oh, and reservations. You can reserve bikes for 10 minutes as you walk up to them… unless they are blue Divvys, in which case the functionality is stated as “coming soon.” You can reserve specific bikes if they are just clipped to random stuff around town, but if they’re on one of the main racks alongside other bikes, you cannot reserve a specific one. Space Divvys have seven-digit identification numbers; black ones are six. So you can see what racks have black or Space Divvys, and you can be guaranteed a bike on that rack, but whether it is one of the good bikes is an open question.
Space Divvy
This brings me to wax poetic for a moment, and is the reason why I wrote this text. The Space Divvy is an impossible construction, a legitimate feat of engineering, so much subtlety packed into a bike that every time you ride one it feels like a gift.
Here are just some of the design details that you get from a Space Divvy:
- A tiny LED screen that shows you how many miles you have remaining in your charge.
- A generously large front basket for storing bags and other goods.
- A complete lack of top tube, making it effectively step-through – useful for flowy pants, long skirts, or dresses.
- A completely shielded rear wheel, keeping you clean from mud & street debris.
- A seat that is extremely easy to hike up & down, and which stays in place once sat on.
- The best head & rear lights on any Divvy.
- Shock absorbers for potholes or ice.
- Effective unbreakability. Most Divvys are in some state of disrepair. Space Divvys feel unkillable.
None of this would matter if the thing sucked to ride, so fortunately it is a dream to do so. In non-hostile bike regions, you usually don’t have to accelerate to a high speed at every light in order to get ahead of cars. In Chicago, though, that is your only priority. Fortunately, Divvy handles this handsomely, going from around 0 to 30 in five seconds. The citywide speed limit is 30. You are effectively a car in bike form. And you have to put in effectively zero effort to pedal the thing.
I have so many fond memories of absolutely teleporting places with a Space Divvy. It is, bar none, regardless of weather condition, the best form of transportation in the city of Chicago. I’ll close with a few.
I once looked at my watch on the lakefront at Fullerton, and realized I had to catch the final bus of the day at Sheffield/Belmont in 14 minutes. Most Chicagoans would read that sentence, throw up their hands, and call a ride on their phone. I found a Space Divvy and got there in 12.
I once rode a Space Divvy in a foot of snow after my bus refused to show up. It took four minutes to go two miles. In a foot of snow.
Finally, I rode a Space Divvy to a show last night, and it was around 95º out. A few blocks away from the venue, someone opened a fire hydrant. The hack is to surround the hydrant with a large car tire, wedge a long plank of wood at a 45º angle underneath the hydrant spigot, and turn the hydrant on. This pushes the water upward instead of outward, and creates a geyser that arcs about 15 feet in the air. Natives know these. I saw it coming from a few blocks away. I maxed out the bike’s speed, got drenched, and felt alive.