Public bike systems should really not require an app. Unrelated but similar...
Here in my town in the US, since covid the McDonald's is still closed for indoor dining/pickup. Therefore they have allowed people to walk through the drive thru line with the cars. (When I was 15, you were not allowed to do this). Some of the people have already placed orders on the app. But the general feeling is a line of cars with two or three people standing between the cars taking their turn to order at the drive thru window, at midnight when nothing else is open. Somehow this ragged line feels more dystopian to me than almost anything else since covid.
One of the problems we're facing today is building a ton of public infrastructure around the assumption that everyone own a car. This leads to sprawling suburbs and horrible public transportation.
I wonder if we're building a future where everyone owns a smartphone which is going to lead to many problems down the line.
> Public bike systems should really not require an app.
<advocate representee="Devil">The web makes for second-rate UIs, especially on mobile platforms. With that in mind, you're going to want to develop iOS and Android apps. Given that, why bother making a mobile web UI as well?</advocate>
Why does it have to be web-based? There are public rental systems that can be unlocked with a phone call (or maybe even SMS). Not every solution to a problem needs to involve a computer on both ends. Of course it's nice to have the web or app solution in addition to that, but it really shouldn't be the only way of interacting with such a system.
