Keeping Kids Off Bike-Share Bikes

I haven't been to China.  At one time in my life, it was at the top of my "bucket list" of places to go.  That was after someone I knew spent a couple of months there about a quarter of a century ago.  She, like other visitors of the time, described it as a "land of bikes", where pedaled two-wheeled conveyances far outnumbered any other kind of vehicle "by about five hundred to one".  And she is an old-school New Englander who isn't given to exaggeration!

From what I heard, that started to change a few years later, as more Chinese people could afford automobiles.  I read accounts of bicycle-thronged streets that had become choked with cars ten or fifteen years later.  It seemed sad, but, really, no different from what happened decades earlier in the US and other places:  Once people had the means to drive, their bicycles were left to collect dust, or dropped in the dustbin.

These days, from what I've been reading, the bicycle has been making a "comeback".  A few years ago, Beijing's bike-share program seemed like a "bust", as automobiles came to be seen as not only symbols of prosperity, but as prerequisites to marriage, at least for some families.  But in cities like the Chinese capital, streets--particularly those in older neighborhoods--are narrow and in other ways ill-suited to automotive traffic.  Plus, thickening smog led to illness and in other ways degraded people's quality of life, and people found that their commutes were taking longer and longer due to snarled traffic.  

So the bicycle seems to be experiencing a renaissance in The Land of Dragons.  Beijing's bike share program is booming, as are those in other Chinese cities. (Of the world's 15 largest bike share programs, only two--those of Paris and London--aren't in China.)  And start-up companies like Mobike are eliminating the ports or docks other share programs use by offering an app that locates bikes that can be unlocked with a code that's sent to a user's phone.

Making bikes easier to access sounds great, at least for some people.  It has, however, led to some unintended consequences.  As someone who teaches and who didn't touch a computer until age 41, I know firsthand that kids are often more tech-savvy than their elders--in part because they have had access to the same devices, but at much earlier ages.

Using the Ofo bike-sharing app in Shanghai

Thus, a kid can access a bike-share or "Uber" bike as easily as anyone else can.  One problem is that Chinese law forbids children under the age of 12 from riding bikes on public roads.  But the consequences for a kid can be even worse than merely becoming a scofflaw:  Although bicycles are once again becoming a common sight, there is still a lot of motorized traffic on major thoroughfares, and even on side roads.  Adult Chinese cyclists, like their counterparts in other countries, have to exercise caution.  Even doing that, though, may not be enough to ensure a child's safety.

That point was driven home with the death of an 11-year-old boy in Shanghai.   While details of the tragedy haven't been revealed, we know that he was riding a bike from Ofo, one of the two main share companies in that city, on a busy road in the downtown area.  

Ofo is cooperating with the investigation and says it working on a way of deterring under-12s from using their bikes.  Some have suggested that the bright yellow color of its  machines (and the bright orange of Mobike, its rival) might entice young riders .  Others have said that Ofo, Mobike and anyone else who might enter the bike-sharing business should restrict access to their wheels in and around schools and other places frequented by children.

Bike Share Bikes Seized In Shanghai

Drivers here in NYC all complain about parking, or the lack thereof.  

Some, it seems, simply don't drive their cars for that very reason.  Or, at least, I came to believe that after seeing cars parked in the same spot for months at a time.  I still recall the Cadillac Seville (the model with the slanted rear end) I saw parked on a Washington Heights street when I moved into the neighborhood. It was still in the exact same spot seven years later!

I've often heard that you "don't have to worry about parking" if you ride your bike to work or school, or for errands.  That's somewhat true:  It's certainly easier to park two motorless wheels than four turbo-powered ones.  Still, there have been times I wasn't able to park my bike:  I arrived at an office, store or other place, only to find that other cyclists had already locked their steeds the signposts, parking meters and other structures to which bicycles could be secured.

Apparently, in China, cyclists have an even harder time parking their bikes.  Residents of Shanghai have complained about that:  They say they can't find places to leave their own bicycles or electric bicycles because parking spaces designated for them are taken by...other cyclists.  

So far, that doesn't sound like much of an emergency.  At least, most people wouldn't see it that way.  The bikes parked in designated spots, however, are taken up with bicycles from bike-sharing programs.  

In Shanghai, there are hundreds of thousands of such bikes. People who use them leave them, not only in the designated spaces for residents' bikes and electric bikes, but also on the streets.  Sometimes they block traffic, especially in older areas of the city, where streets are as narrow as three meters.

So, city authorities have picked up about 4000 illegally-parked bikes--most of them owned by bike-share operator Mobike--and penned up in a public parking area.

Mobike, for its part, says it will cooperate with authorities, in part by paying a management fee to help with the problem.

Coming To My Town?

I am not surprised.

Over the past few weeks, I've written about "Uber for Bicycles"--or, if you like, Citibike (or Velib or Bixi or whatever bike share program you care to name) without the docks or ports.

Such services have become very popular in a few Chinese cities where, apparently, people are getting back to bikes.  The success of such services has caused their operators--Mobike and Ofo, mainly--to eye overseas expansion.  

Turns out, Mobike as well as a few other "rogue" companies are planning to "dump thousands of bicycles on Big Apple streets," as the New York Post exclaimed with the sort of hyperbolic vitriol, or vitriolic hyperbole, on which the Post seems to have a patent.

Mobikes in Shanghai. Photo by Johannes Eisele, from Getty Images.

Those companies are setting their sights on parts of the city not currently served by Citibike--mainly, Manhattan north of 110th Street and Staten Island.  The latter could be particularly fertile territory for a bike-share service, as the city's subway system doesn't run there and there are fewer bus lines and other mass transportation options than exist in the other boroughs.  Bike shares could be particularly useful for commuters and others who ride the Staten Island Ferry to and from Manhattan.

And, I must say, that I like the idea of a port- or dock-free share service.  At the same time, I share the concern expressed by Post editors and others who worry that bikes will be "strewn" all over city sidewalks and streets, as they are in Chinese cities. Those problems, however, could be avoided with sensible regulation.  With such regulation, I think it would be easier to pre-empt such bike-blocked streets and sidewalks because as narrow as some streets in this town are, I would guess they're still wider than those in China, particularly in the old central areas of that country's cities.

(As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I've never been to China.  But I know that New York streets are wider than those in Europe which are, from what I'm told, wider than some of their counterparts in Chinese cities.)

Anyway, I think "Uber for Bikes" is indeed coming to my hometown.  We just need to learn from the experiences of those cities that already have it and develop the right policies for it.

A Lump Of Coal In The Emerald City And The Land Of Jade

A couple of years ago, bike-share programs seemed like "can't-miss" propositions. 

Most municipalities with programs--whether they're funded by cities or corporations, or are not-for-profit organizations, have reported great success.  Share programs have expanded steadily in just about every place they've been introduced, and other cites--some of which you might not connect with cycling--are clamoring to start their own share programs.

Bikes from Pronto, Seattle's late bike-sharing program

One rare exception has been Pronto, Seattle's bike-share program.  It closed on 31 March, citing low ridership.  Several reasons have been cited for the program's failure.  One is that the Emerald City has a mandatory helmet law.  Cyclists who ride without head armor can be fined $102.  More important, getting on a share bike is, as often as not, a spur-of-the-moment decision, and few people carry helmets with them when they're not on bikes.  Many bike-share users are tourists; even those who are active cyclists at home aren't likely to bring helmets with them because, especially if they don't normally wear them.

Three other cities with share programs also have mandatory-helmet laws:  Vancouver and the Australian metropoli of Melbourne and Brisbane.  Share programs in the latter two cities  struggled until they followed Vancouver's lead in including helmets and disposable liners with the bikes.  In 2015, Seattle installed helmet dispensers by the Pronto kiosks, but potential users seemed to find it an inconvenience.

Other factors cited in the Seattle program's failure are the city's terrain and climate.  Now, I can understand why people wouldn't want to pedal a heavy share bike up a hill.  I can even understand why someone wouldn't want to ride in the rain.  But long before Portland became the iconic "bike friendly" city, Seattle had a vibrant cycling community.  In fact, it once boasted more bike shops, per capita, than any other major US city.  The weather didn't seem to put a damper (pun intended) on cycling then, or now.

Then again, I can also understand why a tourist might not want to ride in the rain--especially if he or she is accustomed to more sunshine at home.  If you're used to, say, Florida, and you're only going to be in Seattle for a few days, you might decide to simply wait until you get home to start riding again.

While the causes of the Seattle share program's failures might be debatable, Lei Houyi knows exactly why his bike-share company is closing shop.

These bikes belong to Oko, one of the apps-based Chinese ride-sharing systems.

In contrast with its western counterparts, many Chinese bike-share programs can best be described as "Uber for bikes":  Riders can pick up, or leave, bikes on the streets, without having to look for a port or dock.  Wukong Bikes, based in Chongqin, also followed this model.  But they didn't follow a practice common to other Chinese share companies:  It didn't install GPS devices on their bikes.

The result was all too predictable:  Most of Wukong's 1200 bikes were lost or stolen.  By the time the company realized it needed tracking devices, Houyi said, it was too late:  The bikes were gone and the money had run out.

But, he says, even before his bikes started to disappear, the company was struggling because the bikes were of inferior quality to, and more easily damaged than, those of Ofo and Mobike, the leading Chinese bike-share companies.  The services of those companies are completely app-based.  So, while bikes left in remote locations can still be difficult for customers to locate, they are rarely lost, and when they are damaged, they can be fixed relatively quickly.

So, while I think bike share programs will continue to grow in popularity, they are not "sure-fire bets", even in the most seemingly "bike-friendly" environments, unless technological as well as cultural and legal factors are considered.

"Uber For Bicycles" Coming To Your Town?

As happy as I am to see bike-sharing programs, I have to admit that I haven't used one myself.  When I'm home in New York, I have my own bikes.  The Florida city where my parents live doesn't have a program and I have a bike (such as it is) there.  And, when I've traveled during the past few years I've rented bikes, even in cities (Paris and Montreal) that have share programs.

I rent bikes mainly for a few reasons.  One is that rental bikes are generally better than share bikes. Also, I figure that renting a bike is actually less expensive, given how much I ride, than using a share bike.  Finally, I would rather use my credit or debit card just once, when I pay the rental shop or agent, than to insert or swipe my card in a docking station every time I use a share bike. I'm no expert on cyber-security, but I reckon that the less often I have to use my card, the less vulnerable I am to theft.

But the main reason why I prefer to rent than to use a share system is that I like having the freedom to ride where I want, for as long as I want, without having to worry about finding a docking station.

Cyclists ride bike-share machines around Hangzhou's West Lake. 

During the past year a number of Chinese start-up companies, led by Mobike, have tried to solve the problem. Users of their services download an app that tells them where to find a bicycle, which they unlock by scanning the bike's code into their phones or using a combination they are sent. Then they can ride wherever they want or need to go, and leave their bikes wherever their trip ends.

Three years ago, Beijing's bike share program was deemed a bust.  Increasing affluence brought more cars, seen as symbols of prosperity, into the city and people started to see bicycles as primitive.  Now business is booming for the "Uber of bicycles", as the dockless bike program is called, in the capital as well as in other Chinese cities.

Share bikes piled up near entrance of Xiashan Park in Shenzhen.

In fact, some residents as well as officials complain that they can't park their own bikes when they ride to work, school or wherever because bikes from the dockless share program are parked, often haphazardly, in spaces designated for residents' bikes as well as in other areas--including, at times, the streets.  

Still, the proprietors of those startup companies want to export their service and expand the prosperity they have enjoyed.  They are looking at other Chinese cities, as well as municipalities in Europe and the US.  (Interestingly, of the world's fifteen largest bike share programs, thirteen are in China.  The other two are the ones in Paris, which comes in at number five, and London, which is twelfth.

While some would welcome an "Uber for bicycles", as the service is often called, others fear that they will suffer from the same problems of parking and congestion that are now seen in Chinese cities--especially since some of those places, like Hangzhou and Shanghai, have compact centers that contain historic districts with narrow streets.

N.B.:  Photos are from The Guardian.

No New Bike Shares In Beijing

It wasn't difficult to see this coming: Beijing has banned all new bike-share bikes.

China's largest city has been bedeviled by the same problems as other municipalities where Ofo, Mobike and other private bike-share companies have set up shop:  bicycles are left haphazardly on sidewalks, around people's houses and even in the middle of intersections--or they've been stolen, vandalized or even destroyed.

It seems that the very advantage those share  companies offered--their chip-implanted bikes could be located with an app and left anywhere, and didn't have to be taken from or returned to docking stations--also made life easy for vandals, thieves and people who are simply inconsiderate of others.

Beijing is not the first Chinese city to ban new share bikes. Since it is the largest, though, it begs the question of whether similar bike share schemes in the rest of the country are doomed.  Moreover, these bans are taking effect just as similar programs are starting in municipalities outside China.     

In particular, I wonder about similar operations in the US:  Just last month, Ofo began operating in Seattle, as an example.  It seems that such private companies appealed to cities like Seattle, where an earlier city-funded bike share program failed, or other American cities that are reluctant to use public funding, or where corporations like Citibank (the sponsor of New York's Citibike) might be reluctant to invest in such a project--or where property or business owners don't want docking stations by their frond doors. 

In cities large and small all over the world, there is certainly a demand for bike share programs.  Now the problem seems to be one of how to make them useful and practical without creating nuisances or hazards.