worldwidedreamer

As a San Franciscan bicycling is the most efficient way of traveling around town. Alaska has partnered with Ford to offer 10 RDMs per bike ride. The all you can eat GoBike annual subscription for $149 just got better.

Now, if the points are worth 2 cents/mile and each ride is 10 point...that implies twenty cents of value per ride. 149/.2=745 rides to break even. The program launched in September, and I'm averaging about 50 rides per month. Ergo 50*12=600 rides, so for someone with my usage pattern (to/from work) the miles pay for much of the program cost.

Now...when it comes time for renewal could I get double points paying for the GoBike with an Alaska Visa?

bheltzel

I was just looking at this today and was curious about the monthly/yearly pass and how it affects earning miles. Is it still 10 miles per ride? Couldn't you theoretically abuse this a bit? Thinking about signing up for a monthly after trying out a Go+ today.

flyingstudent

For yearly pass, it's still 10 miles/trip.

Miles post instantly.

jsguyrus

Maybe Alaska will jump in with Lime bike/scooter in the Seattle Tacoma area.

akrooman

Hmmm I might try abusing the system a bit...

VegasGambler

I can't imagine that I could start and end a ride fast enough for 20c worth of miles to be sufficient compensation. Have fun though.

worldwidedreamer

So far I've earned over 10k points via this promotion. I've also lost 15 pounds. I'll book a one-way award to Hawaii whenever I hit that threshold!

I feel good about the environment, and dream about my vacation, with every segment on my commute.

VegasGambler

That's awesome! Obviously this is not abuse, but real usage over a few years.

You know that you can buy a ticket to Hawaii for around $200 right?

TheotherJames

Hmm, that actually sounds like a worthwhile promotion.....usually I compare it to how many miles I can get if I use the same amount of money to just purchase miles and most just don't hold up.

I live 54 miles from work though, not sure if I would survive.

VegasGambler

I'm on the other end of the spectrum... I'm a mile from work and I like to walk.

If I pay $150 you think that AS would give me miles for waking everywhere?

milypan

freqflyercoll

My company recently moved offices, so I signed up for monthly membership to BayWheels (what GoBike was renamed to) for my commute. I then saw the option to link my Alaska Air account after signing up, and obviously decided to see what the limits of mileage earning were.

I use the bikes to get from Caltrain to Embarcadero area, so I bike by at least 3 stations on that route, and can pass 6 or so with only slight deviations. So far I've gotten miles every time I dock and undock the bike.

Also, it doesn't seem like there is (or maybe they got rid of) a lock out period, because I have been able to immediately check out the same bike again. So it seems totally worth it to extend my commute a couple of minutes for an extra 100 AS miles or so per day. The deviations are also a bit of extra exercise I guess

Has anyone run into daily or monthly limited on miles?

worldwidedreamer

The service changed quite a bit with the BayWheels transition. I very much like being able to unlock bikes with a qr code versus typing in a pin, and it is much faster now.

I have not tried to misbehave by returning bikes after very short rentals to earn points---honestly I don't want them to revert to the old model where there was built in waiting. This said plenty of my rides are less than a mile.

I'll add that I'm a month or two away from being able to book a ticket to Hawaii just based on bicycling. How cool!

freqflyercoll

nice! It's pretty good to have earned a free ticket from biking.

I didn't realize the system was pin based before, that would be a lot more annoying to check in and out. You can also use a Clipper and to unlock now, which could be even faster.

I find it strange there isn't some daily / monthly limit on miles earned through this...maybe they figure most people won't bother. I mainly find this worthwhile since I need to commute anyway, but I'm not sure that I would go out of my way to do this.

beckoa

Earning miles for riding a bike would almost get me back on one... almost