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. 

Bike Shares: The "Monster Revealing Mirror"?

I've head and read more than a few anti-bicycle (or, more precisely, anti-cyclist) rants.  Almost invariably, they say we are scofflaws who run red lights, thumb our noses at everyone in sight and run over puppies, kittens and people's grandmothers.

I'll admit that in my younger years, I was bolder and perhaps more reckless than I am now.  But I have never run over anyone's grandmother, or a puppy or kitten.  In fact, I've actually rescued a couple of little furry ones and stopped to help senior citizens with one thing and another.

And I'll also admit that however inaccurate the rants may be, I don't recall anyone--at least, not in this country or this time--blaming us moral decay.  I've been fingered as one of the agents in the breakedown of civil society and Christian values, and as a potential bad influence on young people--but not because I'm a cyclist.  Of course, I might not be the best example one can find for his or her children, but not for the reasons the blamers usually cite.

Anyway, I at least feel fortunate in that most of the time, I can cycle in relative peace, alone or with whomever I choose.  And I can make a case against the haters of cyclists by being law-abiding and well-behaved (mostly).  And I've listened to more than a few rants that ended with the ranter turning to me and catching him or her self:  "I didn't mean you.  It's those others--you know who I mean."

Now, you might think--correctly--that the ranters haven't been on bikes since they were kids, or at all, and they still can't wrap their heads around the idea that someone who's old enough to drive would continue to cycle by choice.  But cyclists--and bicycles--are getting the blame for "moral breakdown" and all manner of bad behavior in one of the first countries that comes to mind when one thinks about everyday adult cyclists.

I am talking about China.  There, bicycles--actually, a specific kind of bike and rider--are seen as the worm in the apple of their country's order.  

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, Chinese bike-share companies have pioneered systems that don't require ports and, instead, depend upon telephone apps and codes.  Borrowers can, therefore, leave their bikes anywhere when they are finished, and anyone who has the share company's app can find it, or any other available bike, wherever it may be.

Well, people are complaining that bikes are left literally anywhere, including in the middle of busy intersections, where they block traffic.  They've also been left on people's doorsteps or in their yards, and in any place where grandmothers can trip over them.

But some Chinese people aren't upset only because users of bike share programs are being inconsiderate of others.  Turns out, those share programs are taking business away from taxi and rickshaw drivers.  They, like those whose properties are blighted or paths are blocked by piles of abandoned bikes, are angry. It's believed that they are behind much of the vandalism and outright destruction of bikes, which includes setting them on fire or tossing them into dumps and rivers.  And bike vandalism isn't limited to the "strip and dump" variety:  individual parts are hacked and shredded, and the pieces are conspicuously displayed. 

(I am reminded of those hate crimes in which the victim is shot, slashed and burned.)

The Chinese response to the bike share menace, if you will, might reveal something about the difference between their culture--or, perhaps the way people see their roles and responsibilities in it--and what we see in the West.  When I hear an anti-bike or anti-cyclist rant here, it always goes in one direction:  against bikes and cyclists.  It is not in any way self-reflective, or even self-referential:  It begins and ends with blame of the bikes or cyclists.

On the other hand, some in China have described bike-share programs as the "monster-revealing mirror."  They believe bikes that are vandalized or block intersections expose the true nature of Chinese people.  Then again, no one seems to be saying that the phenomena I've described are indicators of anything new:  Nearly a century ago, writer Lu Xun assailed Chinese culture as boastful, cruel, selfish and servile.

Well...at least nobody in this country says such things about cyclists.  At least, not in the anti-bike rants I've heard.

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.

Are Bike Share Programs Cutting Giant Down?

For most Americans, a "traffic jam" consists of throngs of cars and other motorized vehicles crawling or standing still on major streets or highways.  In many places, they are a regular feature of what is called--without irony--"rush hour": the times of day when most people are going to, or coming from, work or school.

Until two decades ago, Chinese cities also had traffic jams.  Instead of cars, though, their streets were lined with bicycles.  About the only way an American cyclist could experience anything like it without going to China was to participate in a large organized ride like the Five Borough Bike Tours, where there are sometimes "bottlenecks".

Then, as China became more prosperous, people who used to ride their bikes to work started to drive--to work, and just about everywhere else they could.  Now China was experiencing American-style traffic jams its their cities.

So, a few years ago, some Chinese went back to commuting and getting around by bicycle, as it is faster, especially in the central areas of many cities, than driving.  Once again, there are bikes all over Chinese streets.

It sounds like things should be really good for bicycle manufacturers, doesn't it?  I mean, can't you see Giant, which now makes most of its bicycles in China, just raking in the dough?  

Believe it or not, Giant's stock has more or less flatlined this year.  Its price is now just about the same as it was in December.  Two other major manufacturers, Zhonglou and Shanghai Phoenix, both experienced surges in late 2016 but are now worth less than they were at the beginning of this year.

Giant's listlessness, and the tumble the other two companies have taken, can be blamed to some extent on the China's economic slowdown, which is part of the reason why the Chinese are buying fewer bikes than they did in 2015 or 2014.  More to the point, though, is something that is causing bike sales to shrink in other parts of the world.

In China, as in much of the West, more and more people are riding bikes.  Yet fewer and fewer are buying them.  That doesn't make sense (I am really, really trying not to use the word "counterintutitve"!) until you realize that many new bike commuters and even recreational riders in Shanghai and Hangzhou, like their peers in Paris and London and New York, are riding bikes from share programs.  

Is this cutting Giant down to size?

According to industry analysts, one of the reasons manufacturers like Giant aren't benefiting from the growth of bike share programs is that their production and marketing have been oriented toward bike shop sales, which have been falling--in part because of share programs, and because the ones who have traditionally spent the most money in shops, namely bike enthusiasts, are doing much of their shopping on-line.  

What that means is that companies like Giant didn't, until recently, produce bikes with the apps and other accessories demanded by bike share programs.  Other, smaller manufacturers--including a few start-up companies--have stepped in to fill the gap.  For example, the bikes in New York's, Toronto's and Montreal's share programs are made by Quebec-based Devinci.  While the brand has a following, mainly for its mountain bikes, it is not nearly as well-known as Giant, whose website lists 25 dealers in the five boroughs of New York City, and as many in the surrounding metropolitan area.  Devinci's website, on the other hand, shows only one dealer in New York City (Brooklyn) and one other across the Hudson, in Bergen County, New Jersey.

One of the reasons why smaller companies can fill those voids is that they don't have as much invested in manufacturing facilities as the big companies.  As a result, they don't have to spend as much time or money re-tooling in order to meet changing demands.  As I have mentioned in earlier posts, one of the reasons Schwinn is now a shadow of its former self is that it was slow to adapt to the changing demands of cyclists.  One of the reasons for that was that Schwinn had so much invested in an aging factory and equipment that couldn't produce the lighter bikes adult cyclists wanted.  Paramounts were nice, but most people who took up cycling during the '70's Bike Boom were looking for something that was agile and functional, but wouldn't break the bank:  In other words, something like the Fuji S-10S or Nishiki International.

Could it be that bike-share programs will turn Giant, Specialized and other "giants" (pun intended) of the bike industry into dinosaurs--or Schwinns of the future?

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.