Rental period: per day or per hour?
Borrowing by the day
Think carefully about whether you want to lend your cargobike by the day or by the hour. At the moment, most of the initiatives only offer a loan on a daily basis for the following reasons:
- This is easier for the team of the CSP to organize in comparison to the hourly rental.
- The team at the station also needs less support.
That's what the Hannah team does. It only gives it on a daily basis, because the wards cannot always cope with the higher workload. However, the stations have a free hand to use the bike on one day after returning it a) on their own or b) to borrow it again on site (against completion of the borrowing form). In principle, Hannah can be booked up to three days at a time. Occasionally Hannah enthusiasts in particular may book a Hannah several times in a row and thus keep it for a longer period of time. Hannah's team contacts these users personally and makes it clear that Hannah's team wants to benefit as many people as possible and that the bookings of individual users should be kept in check.
Hourly loan
The following points should be considered when renting the equipment by the hour:
- Higher user requirements can be met and the cargobike is better utilized.
- The free booking system Commons Booking is currently not able to cover the hourly borrowing. A well-functioning, alternative system to cover hourly borrowing has not yet been found.
- For the team of the station, the effort is much higher.
- At the same time, wear and tear of the independent bike and thus the maintenance effort will certainly increase.
- With electric cargobikes, time should be set aside for charging the battery. (In Detmold, for example, one hour is planned for this.)
- Clear regulations must be found if users* return the cargobike too late; a time buffer should be installed for this purpose.
The Detmolder Lastenrad is currently even testing a half-hourly loan.
Four-hour lending intervals
There is a middle road to Lastenvelo Freiburg with four-hour rental periods. In comparison to the daily booking, the borrowing of bicycles is much more flexible, for example, in the mornings, at noon and in the evenings they can be booked by different users*. Otherwise, the same advantages and disadvantages apply here as for hourly borrowing.
Overall, we have found that the rental interval should be chosen over the actual useful life in order to compensate for misinterpretations by users. A posting can also contain several intervals, but it is advisable to limit the total usage period upwards (for example, a maximum of three days).
Excursus Booking Period
The team from Lasse in Münster sometimes has the problem that cargo bikes are booked but not picked up. Lasse can always be booked three months in advance and the team now assumes that this booking period may be too long and people will have forgotten their booking. The Klara team from Hamburg has therefore limited the booking period to 30 days.
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