Social Bicycles have integrated locks on board each bicycle. This allows members to lock bicycles to standard bicycle racks outside of designated hubs. Each local operator may charge an additional fee for out-of-hub locking, creating a system of incentivized pricing to make up for the increased operational cost of redistributing these bicycles.
Bikes locked outside of hubs often have credits posted on the interactive map. This functions as an incentive to encourage users to ride bikes back to hub locations. Please see the “Bike Bounty” section for an explanation on how the pricing mechanism works, and the “Ending A Trip Outside of a System area” section for more information.
All bike bounties and system area fees are customizable by the operator and can control the frequency of out-of-hub lock ups. The out-of-hub fee can be set prohibitively high if a particular location wants to minimize the occurrence of bikes outside of stations. However, if the fee is set at an affordable level, this provides unique flexibility to members, increasing the utility of the bike sharing program.