Lost Booster After Using Cable Lock

Locking an electric bike outside a station (while permitted) will end a boost, because from a system health point of view having a bike docked outside of a station is always less desirable than having it in a station, and because of that reason we have always considered parking outside of a station a non-point earning/streak breaking action.

GPS is never perfect, so bikes that are outside of a station are harder to find than bikes that are inside a station, both for riders and our own staff. Additionally, when bikes are parked outside of a station, we lose operational efficiencies where we can inspect and perform battery swaps on multiple bikes at the same time because they're parked at the same location and easy to find.

So the difference between those two rides is that the ride that didn't break the streak was also started outside of a station, while the ride that broke the streak was started at a station.

That means that from a system health perspective the first ride was neutral, since both in the before and after state there was a bike parked outside a station, while the second ride resulted in a net loss of bikes parked in a station.

Note that you can get points by doing the reverse action (pick up a cable locked bike and parking it in a drop off station) since that is a move that increases the health of the system.