How Divvy Works

So before I get into my experience with Divvy, let's touch base on the basics.  Divvy started in Chicago in June 2013.  It is designed to offer an alternative method of transportation in the City of Chicago.  The key to understanding Divvy is the word "transportation" -- and this is where I think most of the confusion I've heard stems from.  Divvy is not about letting people borrow bikes to ride around the city.    Divvy is simply about offering you an alternative method to get from point A to point B.  Think of it as an alternative to taking a taxi or a bus.

So how does it work?  Divvy offers a great explanation of the experience on its website (divvybikes.com/how-it-works) but I'll also go through the process here.  

There are only two ways to rent a Divvy bike: (1) a one-day pass or (2) an annual pass.  A one-day pass costs $7 and is valid for 24 hours.  An annual pass costs $75 and offers discounts to the overage costs.  

Overage costs?  Yes -- so in the spirit of simply being a method of helping you get from point A to point B, Divvy is essentially a bike share program that lets you use a bike only in 30-minute increments.  If you buy a one-day pass you can use a bike for as many 30-minute increments as you want in that 24-hour period and for the annual pass you have unlimited use of bikes for a year for 30-minute increments.  With only one exception, if you keep the bike longer than 30 minutes, you are charged an overage fee.  How much you are charged depends on how long you keep the bike and whether you have a one-day or annual pass.  The annual pass charges you less for overages than the daily pass.

If you keep a bike for longer than 30 minutes, overage costs work like this:

• 30-60 minutes extra: $1.50 with annual pass and $2 with daily
• 60-90 minutes extra: $4.50 for annual pass and $6 with daily
• each additional 30 minutes after 90 minutes extra: $6 with annual pass and $8 with daily

So if you buy a daily pass and you keep a bike for 45 minutes, it will cost you a $2 penalty on top of the $7 you already paid.  Keep a bike for 2 hours and it will cost you a $16 penalty on top of the $7 you already paid.

Now there is one exception to this rule.  Divvy tries to make sure you always have an open dock when you want to return a bike.  They do this two ways: (1) they maintain twice as many docks as they do bikes and (2) they monitor crowdedness of their docks and constantly reallocate bikes around the city to help ensure that bikes and empty docks are always available rather than a lot of full stations and a lot of empty stations.  However, as you'll see soon from even my brief experience, this isn't always flawless.  So if you show up to a dock and it's full, you can request an additional 15 minutes from the kiosk connected to that dock.  You then have another free 15 minutes to find an empty dock before you incur overage charges.

So how do you actually rent a bike?  I'll discuss my personal experience using a 24-hour pass in my next post.