21/31: Shanghai Shared Bikes Problem
You may heard about shared bikes. The process is simple, you register with the company (may include a small fee), and they give you a card or something so you can rent a bike for free or a small amount for certain period of time. It works this way in most of the countries.
China went a step farther. They created apps where you can find the bikes in the map, look for the cheapest ones, rent the bike just scanning a QR code and then leaving it wherever you wanted.
The shared bike mania began around September 2016, Mobike published its app and delivered its bikes all over Shanghai. With a fee of ¥300 (~43 USD) you were able to create an account and start using the service. By December of the same year Shanghai was already the city with the biggest shared bike network in the world.
But as it usually happens in China, other apps appeared on the market. The second option is called Ofo (this is the main option in the rest of China), their yellow bikes were lighter, had a simpler lock mechanism and had an adjustable seat, awesome for those of us who are considered tall in this part of the world. While the registration fee was cheaper, only ¥100 (~14 USD) each ride would cost ¥1 (~0.15 USD) which wasn’t as convenient as free rides with Mobike.
Awesome, now people had two options, with different things to choose from. Well, not so fast. Others appeared.
BlueGogo, Xiaoming, Youon, 100 bike, and more. At this moment there are more than 20companies for shared bikes working only in Shanghai and more than 40 in all mainland China.
What’s the problem with this bikes? It seems like a great idea to make the city a greener place and more eco friendly, aren’t they? Well, yes and no. While more and more people are opting for using a bike, because they are everywhere, to move around the city, its main advantage is also a disadvantage. They are everywhere, on the pathways, streets, elevators, compounds, buildings, offices, dump yards, rivers, metro station, really everywhere.
Shanghai’s government has started to fix this problem by adding more authorized parking areas in the city, but still people are leaving the bikes everywhere, so the police take this bikes and puts them in a car pound, then contacts the company to pay for the bikes, but companies are not doing this. They prefer to just put more bikes on the streets instead of taking those from the car pounds.
In some areas they are banning these bikes. Some areas in the popular area of Pudong have police mans finning people who park the bikes outside of the designated areas.
People are also taking the bikes as if they were their own, specially for Ofo that has a conventional combination lock, once you know the key you don’t need to use the app anymore, so people are taking this bikes, writing the code and then removing the QR code or numbers so just they can use it. Others use their own locks so no one can take the bike.
While it’s still convenient it’s a real problem in Shanghai right now, it’s impossible to escape from this bikes, and while it’s still a good thing the “bike” pollution generated by them has to stop. Every day it seems to be a new batch of bikes right in front of my compound, Mobike, Ofo, Youon or a new one that’s just entering the market.
While the users can take advantage of different companies offering the same service, there should be some kind of regulation against it, because it quickly went out of control. What started as a great idea to reduce the use of cars and other transportation method, became a new way to pollute the city with something that sounds crazy, too many bikes.
This story is part of my 31/31 challenge. Following a friend’s idea I will publish at least one story every day for the next month.
If you see any error please let me know, the idea is to stop over-reviewing my stories before publishing them.
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