[pmoriarty]

"I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden."

One person's noticing or not noticing bikes being ridden is a poor way to judge the effectiveness of a city-wide program.

I know I've seen plenty of bike-share racks mostly empty of bikes. I could assume from that that these bikes are currently being used. But that's a poor way of judging too, because I don't know if they were ever full, or how many bikes were stolen or lost, etc.

The real way to judge is from data collected by the agency in charge of the bike share program itself (assuming they keep such data and that the data can be trusted), or to have some independent third party keep track of all the bikes and their use.