Hasta La Gadget!

Japanese mobile service provider NTT Docomo announced an update to their bike sharing scheme, called Interstreet, at the recent Wireless Japan exhibition held this week in Tokyo.

Earlier in the year the company teamed up with Japanese company Pedal for a trial service whereby the public could locate and rent bikes from their phones. The new update includes a specifically designed app for Android users and new docking stations allowing a number of different payment methods and more bikes equipped with GPS tracking.

To rent the bikes users touch their Osaifu Keitai (wallet phone) enabled mobiles to the sensor pad on the machines and register their phone number and mail address on the touchscreen display. A confirmation mail is then automatically sent to the phone which users then touch to the locking mechanism. The lock automatically unlocks and the cyclist can then take the bike, the time is registered by the service and on the users phone. Those without FeliCa phones can use either a credit card or another emoney payment system.

The bikes have a holder for the Android phones mounted on the handle bars to make use of the free, specially designed app for the service, COSOADO. The app gives the user map information, highlights local attractions and shops, suggests routes and uses GPS to track where and how far the cyclists pedal. It can also display health information such as how many calories burned during the cycle and the route taken.

Once finished with, the bikes can be left at any of the other bike stations around the area, meaning that one way trips are also possible. Users are then charged automatically, via emoney from their registered phones, based on how long they have used the bikes for.

The health and wellness market is a growing sector globally and tying in smartphone capabilities for a more enhanced experience is an obvious update from Docomo. It would be nice if it could be tied in with a social service such as foursquare or twitter also, users could for example then compete with others for the most distance cycled or areas visited. It would have been simpler also if the whole registration process could have been done via the Android app, without having to go through the different steps each time users want to rent a bike. The key to how useful the service is though will depend on how widely it is implemented, and it would also be nice to see more initiatives made by the government for cycle lanes and paths, of which there is a distinct lack of at present in the city.

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