This is a really great piece. There truly was a massive shift in optimism for these systems when the New York and Chicago RFPs went out. I had my doubts about the sheer scale of these systems accompanying a smooth rollout and execution, but am thrilled to be mostly wrong.
I'd love to know what kind of engineering challenges and missteps occurred in regards to station uptime, load-balancing bike availability, and reliability. Sounds like they're on the right foot now, but the bike share fleet Management software was an open field for a while. I believe Motivate Co is hiring Ruby engineer in NY if anyone's interested.
