This is the story of why I built the
BCycle.Me Mobile Web-App
The Background
On St Patty’s Day my girlfriend and I bought 24-hour passes to B-Cycle, which has 52 bike sharing stations all throughout downtown Denver. The very next day we both bought annual memberships. It’s completely changed our transportation method & places we now frequent. B-Cycle is like Redbox for bikes. You check out a shared bike at one station and check it in at another station. As long as you get from one to another in less than 30 minutes, no additional charges apply. They really push for short rides so that bikes are readily available and thus prevent the problem of somebody hogging the bikes so no other members could use them ($4 every 30 minutes after 1 hr of continuous use). Memberships are very affordable, too: $80/yr (on sale for $59 until 4/30), $20/wk, or $8/day.
The App
Now it’s time to scratch my own itch. Each station has about a dozen or more “docks” (which lock the bikes into the station). On average there are 5.8 bikes available per station for you to check out (I’ve been running my own stats), but at any given time there can 12: which would make the station full and thus not available to check-in any more bikes - or there could be 0: which means you’re not going to check-out a bike at this station, obviously. Therefore it’s important to know which stations you 1) want to check-out from and 2) want to check-in to. There are a few mobile-friendly options for doing this currently (including an official B-Cycle iPhone app), but they’re all terrible to use - none of them allow you to quickly understand the availability of each station. So I created my own B-Cycle Web-App. You won’t find it in the iPhone App Store or Android Marketplace - it’s simply a website you visit on any smartphone: BCycle.Me. It utilizes the latest mobile technology so it feels & acts like a real app.Some features of the app:
- Availability is shown by green (4+ bikes available), yellow (4 or less), or red (0). This is all real-time, you can even test it: check-in a bike, hit refresh, and watch the counter go up.
- Bike-friendly routes can be shown from one station to another by setting your “A” starting station and “B” destination station (shake to clear directions)
- What’s Around: after selecting a station, scroll down to see nearby businesses/restaurants




