I Won’t Be Renewing My SmartBike DC Membership

Just received a solicitation from SmartBike DC/DDOT to continue supporting its bike-sharing efforts by renewing my membership. I will not be renewing. While I very much support the concepts behind SmartBike DC (indeed, I bought a membership despite having more bikes than one person ought to), the extraordinarily poor customer service has soured me greatly on the implementation. While the occasional malfunctioning rack is understandable on a pilot project, the complete lack of any response to my multiple calls and emails about an improperly returned bike, the suspension of my account, and the sharing of SmartBike DC’s customer’s emails on the Internet is unacceptable. These failures weren’t the occasional mistake, but a continuous absence of any sort of customer service. And this doesn’t even touch on SmartBike DC’s ridiculous decisions to occasionally shut down its operations when people need it most (snow days, Inauguration). I hope that DDOT will take this story into account when selecting future vendors and (hopefully) redesigning its customer service standards.  Bike-sharing is an important part of the transportation puzzle, but there’s no need to accept such dismal performance.

The email from SmartBike DC/DDOT is on the flip.

Dear SmartBike Member,

Happy Anniversary!

The SmartBikeDC team and I want to thank you for your participation in this bold experiment in urban transportation as we celebrate our first year in operation. We hope you have enjoyed and benefited from the SmartBikeDC program and that you will take the time now to renew your membership.
I would also like to take this opportunity to give you an update on our expansion plans. We had hoped to have a fully expanded bike sharing program in operation throughout the District and into the surrounding jurisdictions by this time. Since the current program was offered as a pilot program attached to the District’s new bus shelter program, working out the operation and financing of the expansion proved to be more difficult than we anticipated.
In the meantime, bike sharing technologies have advanced rapidly; some of these new technologies offer substantial advantages in areas such as cost and portability. We want to assure you that the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) continues to explore all options for expansion of our bike sharing program. At this time, our best estimate for when you will see new stations and bikes around the city, SmartBikeDC or otherwise, is the Spring of 2010.

We want to assure you that in the event we do switch systems and/or vendors, SmartBikeDC memberships will be honored on the new system. The current system will operate at least until we have a new system up and running. So for those of you contemplating your expiring membership, please renew, and continue enjoying your SmartBikeDC experience.

Finally, I want to thank our colleagues at Clear Channel Outdoor for their hard work over the last year (and more) on the installation and operation of SmartBikeDC. I have now had the opportunity to see other bike sharing systems, and I can assure you that no one works harder on bike maintenance and circulation than these folks.

We will provide more information as we make progress on the expansion. In the meantime please feel free contact SmartBikeDC or Jim Sebastian at DDOT with your questions and comments.

Enjoy and ride safely,

Gabe Klein
Director, DDOT