Get the Most Out of Your Nice Ride MN Experience With Spotcycle

Spotcycle is a convenient and useful app created by 8D Technologies for the purpose of  locating bike stations and bike & dock availability of bike share systems for 26 cities in the U.S. and 7 countries.  It can even be used to create and share personalized bike routes or search for routes created by other Spotcycle users.

Here in the Twin Cities the Spotcycle app works great with our own bike share system, Nice Ride MN.   Nice Ride bikes are available for use 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from April to November with numerous locations scattered throughout the Twin Cities.  A subscription is required to use Nice Ride and they are available yearly for $65 and daily for $6.  Trip charges do occur if you use the bikes more than a half an hour, but with so many bike stations around town it's easy to stay under thirty minutes and incur no trip fees.  For more details on how Nice Ride MN works, click here.  Sign up for Nice Ride MN today and get rolling.

Spotcycle is easy to set up, simply select a city and it will show all of the bike stations for your area either on a map or a list.

In the list display, stations can be sorted alphabetically, by number of bikes or docks available or by distance from your location. Select from All, Bike or Dock for for station availability information.  Switch to map view by selecting the map icon.

Search for stations that are nearby and list them alphabetically, by bikes available, docks available or by distance from your current location.  If you know the station name you can search by station.  A map view is available by selecting the map icon.

Frequently used stations can be grouped in Favorites for quick access.

View a favorite in list or map display by selecting that group.

Once you are ready to ride, keep track of your use time using the rental timer.

Track and share your routes via Facebook, Twitter or email.  Keep your routes private if you choose or edit and share them later.  Annotations can be added along the way easily while tracking your route.

Other Spotcycle user routes can be searched by Top Rated, Top Viewed, Browse By Category or Search Routes and bookmarked for later use.  One route I found particularly interesting was the "Minneapolis Original Garage Band" route.

All the features of the Spotcycle app can be accessed by computer by registering and signing in to your Spotcycle account.  Route creation and editing can also be done from your computer.

If you are a current Nice Ride subscriber or are thinking about becoming one, the Spotcycle app will definitely be a handy companion to enhance your Nice Ride experience.  Spotcycle is a free app and is available for Android, iPhone and Blackberry.  For questions about using the Spotcycle app, visit the Spotcycle FAQ page. 

Stay up-to-date with Spotcycle by reading the Spotcycle Blog, following on Twitter or "Like" on Facebook.

*Note:  All app screenshots in this post are from the Android app.