StadtRAD Hamburg rent-a-bike

Stadträder
Originally uploaded by binger1969

Hamburg has a new rent-a-bike system in place since the beginning of the month and I have to say: it works! This is obvious by the number of bikes that you see people riding around on and the number of bikes you DON'T see at the rental stations. There are over 500 bikes available and I tried the system this week out. Three times, already.
What I like about the system is that they took the effort to make it as painless as possible for you to start using it.

1) You can register on the spot, in the terminals or over the web or phone. I registered at one of the terminals.
2) Registration fee is low at €5,00 and it is reverted back to you in credits, so, basically, it is free.
3) The first 30 minutes riding are free. That covers most of the trips people have to do here in Hamburg.
4) Even when trips take more than 30 minutes, the prices are affordable: 4 or 3 cents for the next 30 minutes and 6 or 8 cents after the 60th minute, with a cap of €12,00 a day.
5) The terminals work very well and are easy to use.
6) The bicycles are attractive and good quality.

Hamburg is a great city to cycle. It is mostly flat and has very good bike paths. Furthermore, the subway system, even though it is great, is expensive, at €2,70 for the usual trip. It is summer, so the weather also helps at the moment.
I want to see how things develop in the winter. It won't certainly be as nice as now, wet and cold. Also, I am curious to see if the bikes will hold up. The second bike I rented already had problems with the gears (after less than a month!) and the third bike had a broken bell.
The station closest to my home is 10 minutes on foot away, so it is not an alternative I will take too often, if I can use my own bike. But it is great for when you get back on train from somewhere else and don't feel like taking the metro.
I have two points of critique to the system, though:

1) There is no way to see where other stations are on the terminals. You see the stations close to you, but you cannot check where the stations are in your area of destination. It prevented me from taking a bike at least once.
2) You get a very strange ID number to login to their website, composed of your birth date and some more digits. First, it is difficult to remember. Second, my birth date is the kind of information I don't usually give away to others.

But those are simply solved with a bit of code, so let's hope the system works well also in the future.