8 ms·

As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

108 points by KKKKkkkk1 9y ago

kstenerud 9y ago
"China has been pushing for years to develop technology products that catch fire overseas." I almost pissed myself laughing at this line.
- brad0 9y ago
  Sadly I think the pun was completely missed by the author. :)
- wybiral 9y ago
  Shucks. Samsung beat them to it...
  - Markoff 9y ago
    wasn't the battery supplier from China?
zdw 9y ago
Having just travelled to Beijing, these bikes literally are everywhere, frequently stands of 20-50 or more from the many many companies that offer them outside a subway station, so I can see the pushback about cluttering up the place. Most of the people I talked to are pretty positive on them - it's fairly easy to find one, and they're dirt cheap to ride (most are sub-$0.10/hr if my math is right). I like to think of this as closer to Uber's driver-free endgame - manage a bunch of rentable objects that provide transportation, except in this case they're taking advantage of public parking areas and that's a public bad.
- sethherr 9y ago
  The amount of space taken up by car parking makes me generally unsympathetic to complaints about bike sharing "taking up too much public space" - though perhaps there is less car parking in china.
  - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
    Space taken by car-parking is typically in dedicated parking lots: out of the way and doesn't impede public rights-of-way - compare to having bicycles ridden on sidewalks and interfering with car traffic.
    - sethherr 9y ago
      In the US, the majority of streets have at least a lane of space taken up by parking. If half of that was offered to bikes there wouldn't be any bike parking issues.
      - petre 9y ago
        It's the same in biger cities in France, Eastern Europe, even in Germany, although the Germans are better behaved probably because of huge fines.
        skrause 9y ago
        In Germany the fines for parking where you aren't allowed to park are something like 10 €, probably much lower than the European average.
    - GuiA 9y ago
      In some cases it does not impede public right of way; but it has a much deeper, longer term, insidious cost. https://youtu.be/Akm7ik-H_7U https://youtu.be/Akm7ik-H_7U
    - sethherr 9y ago
      Also "interfering with car traffic" is silly. Bikes are traffic too and have just as much right to being in the road as cars.
      - stephengillie 9y ago
        Many bicyclists are afraid to be on the road, and many drivers believe roads are for aggressive car/truck drivers only. There is some basis for this, as novice bicyclists can have difficulty maintaining 25mph for miles, and many drivers are eager to prove their engine is stronger than a pair of legs.
- cepp 9y ago
  Almost all services are now about $0.07USD/hour, or less and, even better, free on the weekends. Having just come back from living in Shanghai for some time, nothing makes it more convenient than not having to think about the price.
brad0 9y ago
Aren't all of these bike sharing startups a symptom of a bigger cause? Afaik there's a huge property bubble in China, particularly in Beijing. A lot of people have become billionaires quickly and they're looking to invest that money into something else. But the bike sharing startups are a bubble within themselves. I wonder when it's all going to pop.
- beguiledfoil 9y ago
  What's unsustainable about cheap bikes?
  - brad0 9y ago
    The cost of maintenance is one. The other is getting back bikes that have been misplaced due to bad behaviour.
  - kurthr 9y ago
    Its not about cheap bikes. The bikes break, are destroyed, left somewhere useless/dangerous, or are stolen/confiscated. The investment money that paid for them was leveraged (an investment/loan). The income from the surplus of nearly free bikes can't pay back the investors and retain their ridership. Meanwhile, people who live near a point of interest have to deal with a massive pile of dumped (possibly broken) bikes in front of where they work/live... and they pay a public price.
    - ospider 9y ago
      technically, the newer models get GPS track devices builtin, so the chance of maintenance might be smaller than you thought.
  - lozenge 9y ago
    At $0.07/hour, with a bike cost of $80, the bike needs to be taken on 1,200 hour-long trips to recoup its investment. That's possible, but not in a city with 1 hire bike for every 16 people. And this isn't even considering the bike repair, lost/vandalised/taken apart bikes, trucks needed to move the bikes when people's trips don't balance the bikes out (e.g. people riding public transport uphill and bikes downhill). Even most publicly funded bike shares don't make a profit. They bring benefits to their city in reduced pollution and traffic, and increased health and enjoyment. None of which will show up on a start-up's balance sheet.
gremlinsinc 9y ago
Join the club.... looks like every country is full of fucked up "what's in it for me" hipsters that only look out for number one... Wish we could just have aliens attack so we either get killed off or band together form a global gov't of earth that looks out for all citizens (like star trek) - that's resource based (like the venus project)... and people only take/consume what they absolutely need and give back as much as they can... It's a nice pipe dream...probably not in my life time... I'll be happy if immortality is achieved...
- johnchristopher 9y ago
  We have a global climate crisis and we aren't banding together fast enough. Star Trek earth started getting its shit together after world war three (and it took almost a century to clean things). Then a wazoo built a fast rocket and the rest is an historical documentary about a possible future. As a specie we are on our own. Nobody is coming down from the sky to save us.
11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
It seems to say more about the mentality of the investing community than anything else. I'd say good ideas are scarce and/or investors aren't really able to identify them, so they wind up doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Would love to hear examples of recent investments in Chinese startups that have businesses based on something truly novel.
- Hannah7777 9y ago
  Yeah it`s Possible. .....Anybody can earn 250$+ daily... You can earn from 6000-12000 a month or even more if you work as a full time job... ====http://www.bosscyber.com http://www.bosscyber.com
- rahimnathwani 9y ago
  "Liulishuo raises approximately $100M in Series C funding to extend its lead in building smart AI English teachers" http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/liulishuo-raises-approximately-100m-in-series-c-funding-to-extend-its-lead-in-building-smart-ai-english-teachers-300494378.html http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/liulishuo-raises-app...
edoceo 9y ago
We have three vendors for $1 bikes in Seattle. Choose green, yellow or orange. Nearly zero difference. Now they are being abused (hung from poles, dumped in the lake, etc) What's going to become of these 1000s of bikes toward our long winter, all the casual sunny-day riders are gone.
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  I saw an adult riding one in the suburbs yesterday. Really weird to see an adult riding a bike without the full spandex gear.
  - dilemma 9y ago
    Why?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  There was an article fairly recently on HN about how bike sharing is failing in San Francisco because it's so hilly. All the bikes would start at the top of hills and end up at the bottom and there was no system in place to relocate them back to the top.
  - neves 9y ago
    In the somewhat hilly Madrid, the system is of electric bikes. In Paris, if you leave the bike in Montmartre (high hill) they give more time in your hide.
    - w-m 9y ago
      > In Paris, if you leave the bike in Montmartre (high hill) they give more time in your hide. This incentive seems to have little to no effect. Bike stations on top of the Paris hills (Montmartre, Belleville, Pantheon, ..) are almost always completely empty. It's not a huge issue in Paris as the city is mostly flat and you can walk down the hills within 5 minutes usually, finding a bike. The same system would fail miserably in a in a predominantly hilly city such as SF.
princeb 9y ago
melbourne and singapore are also seeing these problems. long story short, there are twats in every country. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/obike-responds-to-criticism-of-bike-sharing-scheme/8813574 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/obike-responds-to-crit... https://vulcanpost.com/608463/bike-sharing-singapore/ https://vulcanpost.com/608463/bike-sharing-singapore/
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Are you from the UK? It's usually munters who cause problems in NZ and Australia.
- Gigablah 9y ago
  Yeah, there were a few highly-publicized cases of bike vandalism in Singapore but thankfully it seems to be subsiding. I'm actually seeing a lot more bikes from multiple bike-sharing companies around my neighbourhood these days. It's definitely catching on.
nkrumm 9y ago
It's worth pointing out that that the Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) has been providing this sort of service for at least a decade (I remember seeing them parked outside of train stations in 2008): https://www.callabike-interaktiv.de/de/registrieren https://www.callabike-interaktiv.de/de/registrieren
- denzil_correa 9y ago
  There are many such bike sharing services in Germany like LidleBike [0] and NextBike [1]. But, I think it's relatively much more expensive than owning your own bike. [0] https://www.lidl-bike.de/de https://www.lidl-bike.de/de [1] https://www.nextbike.net/en/ https://www.nextbike.net/en/
CaliforniaKarl 9y ago
The Bay Area already has this, in the form of Google Bikes, which sometimes (often?) find their way off-campus. I have before come across one outside the entrance to my apartment building (the one I live in, I mean): The bike was standing on the walkway, obstructing it. I found that interesting, because the building has two underground secured area for bikes, and residents can take their bikes through to their apartments. You may reply "Well, where was the outside bike rack?" And you are right, there is none. But, in response I bring up the Whole Foods not too far away: They have a bike parking area, and the Google bike was parked not there. Of course, it's possible (likely?) that a Googler hadn't left it there: Someone could've taken it. Either way, I think the point still stands: You have effectively a station-less bike sharing plan, and bikes are ending up outside of where they're supposed to be. Does Google still do 20% projects? This seems like an interesting thing to study!
eungyu 9y ago
I just hope we don't sling shot back to individualistic ownership driven economy (as opposed to sharing economy). Sincerely hoping that after the dust settles there is a tiny bit of forward progress.
holri 9y ago
Vienna had this problem decades ago when the city donated a lot of gratis bikes without any registration / GPS whatsoever. Just take the bike and leave it anywhere. They replaced the system with a station based one with registration, and a small fee after 1 hour usage. This works well.
- stevekemp 9y ago
  That's similar to the system here in Helsinki. There are specific stations all over the city where you can collect/drop-off your bike. You get 30 minutes of free time each time you "checkout" a bike, and are charged extra if you go beyond that. People do seem to use the system sensibly, taking a bike to go somewhere. Doing their stuff, then taking a second bike home such that the don't keep the same one for >30 minutes to incur the extra (small) charges.
- Rotareti 9y ago
  Hamburg has these bikes too, since about 5 years or so. They have an App to unlock the bikes from a station. These stations are everywhere. It's such a nice addition to public transportation! And it's free for 30min, which is enough for most rides.
- danieldk 9y ago
  There was a gratis bicycle plan in Amsterdam in 1965 ('witte fietsenplan'): https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/26/story-cities-amsterdam-bike-share-scheme https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/26/story-cities-... Interestingly enough 'The free white bikes were quickly removed by the police, who were hostile to Provo’s anarchist initiatives. ' Also, apparently, they had a small-scale electric car-sharing system in 1974.
b6 9y ago
Rudeness and inconsiderateness are everywhere, but as anyone who has lived in China for a long period of time can tell you, it is endemic in China. I'm not aware of any place where the problem is generally thought to be as bad. Why, I don't know. The one-two punches of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution come to mind. As to why China was affected more than other places that suffered similar trauma, maybe it's because China is big enough that it can serve as its own world. Most Chinese people can choose to have no dealings with foreigners if they want, unlike somewhere like, say, Cambodia. The bikes certainly aren't causing some wave of inconsiderateness. It's just a more visible way for the extreme inconsiderateness of the general mentality in China to be expressed.
- Taniwha 9y ago
  I think there's a cultural thing going on here - in many places people are paid to sweep the streets so the city doesn't put out public trash cans ... people aren't being 'dirty' here, they just put their trash in different places (and yes I find it hard to throw stuff on the ground too, I hold on to it in China, I'm socialised that way)
paradite 9y ago
A universally applicable phenomenon where lack of ownership leads to uncivil behavior got caught in China due to its sheer scale of sharing economy and NYT says "Great material for China bashing. Make sure we get a good title to reflect how bad China is."
- rixed 9y ago
  There are also many users behaving properly. Do you have data showing that property does not yield to as much uncivil behavior? Like, for instance, do car owners behave better than shared bike owner?
chairmanwow 9y ago
I am currently living in Shanghai and I use Mobike, Ofo, or 赶赶单车 to get to work everyday. I have logged over 250km between the services. This article is largely unfair. The city has large swaths of sidewalk established as bike parking zones. I can almost always find a bike zone within 10-50m. Furthermore, there are almost always parking attendants and security guards outside of malls and subway stations ensuring that bikes are parked correctly. Even when these people aren't present, I rarely ever see bikes anywhere but the bike zones. And as much space as the bikes take up, it is NOTHING compared to the parked cars along the streets. Furthermore, I see company trucks collecting and relocating bikes multiple times per week. They are constantly shifting bikes of high supply to areas of demand. There are certain times of day (eg Saturday night at the Bund) where there are untold legions of bikes, but car traffic is flowing well. Many of the trips that I've taken on a Mobike were out of convenience. In American cities the fastest mode of transportation is almost always a car. However, because the bikes are essentially door-to-door with no delay, I can almost always beat a hired car because there is no delay and I can zip between waiting traffic. Chinese cities are being strangled to death by the crazy growth in car traffic. There has been insane immigration to cities and average income has gone way up. The net effect is a lot more car usage. Every taxi driver I have complains about the ever-worsening traffic conditions, year-over-year trip times increasing etc. Bike sharing does A LOT to alleviate this by providing a convenient, quick, and cheap ($0.10-0.20 / 30min) method to travel. This is all ignoring the obvious ecological impact of the many tons of CO2 not released by the saved hydrocarbon fueled trips.
- sberder 9y ago
  Living in Shanghai, closing on 2000km on mobike only. Try going to the flower market on wanhangdu lu and you'll get an idea of the abuse of both bikes and pavement. I love the service and I think it's a fantastic alternative to pubic transports/taxi/DiDi but you can't deny the absolute lack of care of a lot of users. I regularly see: * Bikes locked with a separate lock * Bikes parked inside compounds you can't access * Bikes parked inside a building on any given floor (it's normal here for people to park their bike or electric scooter just outside their door even in high rise) * Bikes parked on the street in the middle of traffic Even with those behaviors, those companies have completely reshaped the way people move in Chinese cities.
Proven 9y ago
LOL What's wrong is this: 1) the government teaches its people that Chinese culture is superior to others, and perfect too so they don't need to improve 2) this is aided by the fascistic control of the media so even those who might want to learn, can't 3) socialism - just like in the USA - is messing them up. I don't expect American socialists to understand, but libertarians have surely noticed the main problem in TFA is the lack of private property Most hilariously, I absolutely love to read these articles in leftist media who are always shocked that something doesn't work. Riot!
AhIDc7xgZ2 9y ago
Yawn. Another piece from the lying MSM attacking bikes and trains and transportation for the poor.
devmunchies 9y ago
This is a concept that you learn in an intro to economics class in college. People will abuse a free, limited resource. A sharing-based economy doesn't work.
- xvilka 9y ago
  It's not an economic issue, it's a human nature. Just most of the people lack morals, no matter what country. Sad, but true.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    "Just most of the people lack morals" Society wouldn't exist if that were the case, most problems are caused by a minority.
  - esturk 9y ago
    What's easier to change? An business model or human nature? Clever people already know not to fight human nature and build their business models around it.
    - xvilka 9y ago
      I'm not saying we should change human nature, it's impossible at the one human life scale. Just correcting this is not exactly an economics. But yes, of course business model should just keep this in mind. Even sharing economy can adapt to this requirement and still be profitable.
- nearmuse 9y ago
  Lived in France for some time, and bike sharing works fairly well. From time to time I've seen vandalized/bad condition/abandoned bikes, but never at the scale described in this article. You authorize something to the tune of 150€ charged from your credit card if bike is not returned on time, which eliminates extreme carelessness. So this is clearly a problem with implementation and said startups, not the sharing economy. There are people who behave like that everywhere.
juiyout 9y ago
If there is money tied to rider's mannerism, I would be confident to predict that almost all the observed issues will be resolved.
- askvictor 9y ago
  I think they have the capacity to do this (o-bikes in Melbourne have similar issues), but haven't enabled it yet while trying to build up a customer base; additionally there is nothing to stop dickheads kicking over parked bikes for no particular reason.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  There's a ¥300 deposit to get started with Mobike. You can get kicked from the service and lose your deposit for egregious behaviour. I recently forgot to lock a bike after use and lost 15 points from my account. You start off with a hundred points and get one per ride. If you go below 85 you pay much, much higher hourly rates than normal. All of these issues are soluble.
kisstheblade 9y ago
Recently visited china and noticed that the people there behave really filthy. They eat their lunches on the go when walking in the city, and when they are done they just dump the styrofoam containers and leftovers right there in the street. Then city workers collect them in huge stinky mounds waiting to be ferried of somewhere. Apparently city living is such a new concept there that a sence of community hasn't evolved and everybody at least would try to take care of the common spaces.
- Markoff 9y ago
  why wouldn't they throw it away if they know someone will clean it in few hours? or you have street sweepers unemployed? it's same with fast food, only ducks who wanna make fast food workers unemployed take their tray and trash from table in fast food chain knowing there is designated person collecting these trays and cleaning tables
m-i-l 9y ago
The problem of vandalism might be worse in the UK[0], e.g. "the scale of vandalism took him [Steve Pyer, Mobike UK's general manager] by surprise. It has been far worse than in any of the Asian countries where Mobike operates 5m bikes" [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche...
Baeocystin 9y ago
I found this video by ex-pat YouTuber Serpentza to be quite informative on the issue, and he has been living in China for long enough to have an insider's perspective. Well worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g
keithpeter 9y ago
The OA links to an article about dockless bike sharing in Manchester UK [1]. Quote from the Manchester article "On launch day, the Chinese designer told me the bikes were basically indestructible and should last four years without maintenance. It took a matter of hours before local scallies worked out how to disable the GPS trackers and smash off the back wheel locks." Truly "the street finds its own uses for things". The kids are hacking the bikes for fun and display of prowess which is normal-ish behaviour for adolescents. These objects suddenly arrived in the world, so the local teenagers decided to explore this new and interesting crop. The OA mentions New York city authorities sending cease and desist letters to a dock-less bike sharing company in the city. I'm hardly surprised, the pavements need active management at the best of times. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche...
rhaps0dy 9y ago
How about docked bike sharing? Barcelona has been having one for some time, it doesn't have many of the problems here, even though our suzhi is not very high. It does have the problem that you have to start and finish in a dock, but that seems minor.
- lozenge 9y ago
  The investment required is huge. On top of the costs for the bikes ($80 each) there's another $1000+ to install the docks. Not to mention the huge Chinese bureaucracy to navigate if you wanted to install docks in public spaces. https://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ITDP_Bike_Share_Planning_Guide.pdf https://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ITDP_Bike_Sh... (page 109)
usnigg 9y ago
I've been living in several European countries for the last 20+ years and believe me vandalism is far worse here than in any Asian country I've visited so far including China. I think this article is at best a good example of pointless journalism and at worst just another thinly veiled racist china bashing. Sad to see it gets so much attention on HN.
contingencies 9y ago
Here in Shenzhen where it is stinking hot all the damn time (we don't get freezing, snowy/sleeted, dust storms or 'normal') and windy/wet some of the time, there's government e-bike stations all about my area. Unfortunately I can't use them because they don't take foreign passport numbers. Otherwise, I would.
- kirerukaze 9y ago
  I live in Shenzhen and I use Mobike all the time. The biggest obstacle was getting a bank account to pay with. The identity verification process was to take a picture of your passport and a picture of you holding your passport, and then it took half a day for Mobike to verify the information.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    Mobike != government system.
jaclaz 9y ago
Just in case, previous NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/asia/beijing-bike-sharing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/asia/beijing-bike-s... On other news, this summer, August, Mobike started being deployed in Florence and Milan, Italy: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-07/26/content_30250146.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-07/26/content_302... it is too early/too few bikes are in service yet, next test will be London: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/indyventure/mobike-china-bike-sharing-scheme-london-launch-boris-bicycles-no-docking-stations-santander-a7868916.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/indyventure/mobik... but I bet we'll soon see if Europeans will be more polite than the Chinese ... Manchester, UK, seems like having the same issues: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche... In any case the Chinese problems must be large enough to have the Government intervene: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-china-issues-bike-sharing-guidelines-complaints.html https://phys.org/news/2017-08-china-issues-bike-sharing-guid...
Rafert 9y ago
The introduction of similar oBikes in Amsterdam and Rotterdam prompted comments from my friends seeing similar bad behaviour. Meanwhile I live in Montreal, where with the Bixi bikes you need to return them to a station (spread throughout the city) and there's no problem.
jiyinyiyong 9y ago
Let's see what will happen outside China. Then compare them with data :P

108 points by KKKKkkkk1 9y ago

"China has been pushing for years to develop technology products that catch fire overseas." I almost pissed myself laughing at this line.

brad0 9y ago
Sadly I think the pun was completely missed by the author. :)
wybiral 9y ago
Shucks. Samsung beat them to it...
- Markoff 9y ago
  wasn't the battery supplier from China?

zdw 9y ago

Having just travelled to Beijing, these bikes literally are everywhere, frequently stands of 20-50 or more from the many many companies that offer them outside a subway station, so I can see the pushback about cluttering up the place. Most of the people I talked to are pretty positive on them - it's fairly easy to find one, and they're dirt cheap to ride (most are sub-$0.10/hr if my math is right). I like to think of this as closer to Uber's driver-free endgame - manage a bunch of rentable objects that provide transportation, except in this case they're taking advantage of public parking areas and that's a public bad.

sethherr 9y ago
The amount of space taken up by car parking makes me generally unsympathetic to complaints about bike sharing "taking up too much public space" - though perhaps there is less car parking in china.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  Space taken by car-parking is typically in dedicated parking lots: out of the way and doesn't impede public rights-of-way - compare to having bicycles ridden on sidewalks and interfering with car traffic.
  - sethherr 9y ago
    In the US, the majority of streets have at least a lane of space taken up by parking. If half of that was offered to bikes there wouldn't be any bike parking issues.
    - petre 9y ago
      It's the same in biger cities in France, Eastern Europe, even in Germany, although the Germans are better behaved probably because of huge fines.
      - skrause 9y ago
        In Germany the fines for parking where you aren't allowed to park are something like 10 €, probably much lower than the European average.
  - GuiA 9y ago
    In some cases it does not impede public right of way; but it has a much deeper, longer term, insidious cost. https://youtu.be/Akm7ik-H_7U https://youtu.be/Akm7ik-H_7U
  - sethherr 9y ago
    Also "interfering with car traffic" is silly. Bikes are traffic too and have just as much right to being in the road as cars.
    - stephengillie 9y ago
      Many bicyclists are afraid to be on the road, and many drivers believe roads are for aggressive car/truck drivers only. There is some basis for this, as novice bicyclists can have difficulty maintaining 25mph for miles, and many drivers are eager to prove their engine is stronger than a pair of legs.
cepp 9y ago
Almost all services are now about $0.07USD/hour, or less and, even better, free on the weekends. Having just come back from living in Shanghai for some time, nothing makes it more convenient than not having to think about the price.

brad0 9y ago

Aren't all of these bike sharing startups a symptom of a bigger cause? Afaik there's a huge property bubble in China, particularly in Beijing. A lot of people have become billionaires quickly and they're looking to invest that money into something else. But the bike sharing startups are a bubble within themselves. I wonder when it's all going to pop.

beguiledfoil 9y ago
What's unsustainable about cheap bikes?
- brad0 9y ago
  The cost of maintenance is one. The other is getting back bikes that have been misplaced due to bad behaviour.
- kurthr 9y ago
  Its not about cheap bikes. The bikes break, are destroyed, left somewhere useless/dangerous, or are stolen/confiscated. The investment money that paid for them was leveraged (an investment/loan). The income from the surplus of nearly free bikes can't pay back the investors and retain their ridership. Meanwhile, people who live near a point of interest have to deal with a massive pile of dumped (possibly broken) bikes in front of where they work/live... and they pay a public price.
  - ospider 9y ago
    technically, the newer models get GPS track devices builtin, so the chance of maintenance might be smaller than you thought.
- lozenge 9y ago
  At $0.07/hour, with a bike cost of $80, the bike needs to be taken on 1,200 hour-long trips to recoup its investment. That's possible, but not in a city with 1 hire bike for every 16 people. And this isn't even considering the bike repair, lost/vandalised/taken apart bikes, trucks needed to move the bikes when people's trips don't balance the bikes out (e.g. people riding public transport uphill and bikes downhill). Even most publicly funded bike shares don't make a profit. They bring benefits to their city in reduced pollution and traffic, and increased health and enjoyment. None of which will show up on a start-up's balance sheet.

gremlinsinc 9y ago

Join the club.... looks like every country is full of fucked up "what's in it for me" hipsters that only look out for number one... Wish we could just have aliens attack so we either get killed off or band together form a global gov't of earth that looks out for all citizens (like star trek) - that's resource based (like the venus project)... and people only take/consume what they absolutely need and give back as much as they can... It's a nice pipe dream...probably not in my life time... I'll be happy if immortality is achieved...

johnchristopher 9y ago
We have a global climate crisis and we aren't banding together fast enough. Star Trek earth started getting its shit together after world war three (and it took almost a century to clean things). Then a wazoo built a fast rocket and the rest is an historical documentary about a possible future. As a specie we are on our own. Nobody is coming down from the sky to save us.

11thEarlOfMar 9y ago

It seems to say more about the mentality of the investing community than anything else. I'd say good ideas are scarce and/or investors aren't really able to identify them, so they wind up doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Would love to hear examples of recent investments in Chinese startups that have businesses based on something truly novel.

Hannah7777 9y ago
Yeah it`s Possible. .....Anybody can earn 250$+ daily... You can earn from 6000-12000 a month or even more if you work as a full time job... ====http://www.bosscyber.com http://www.bosscyber.com
rahimnathwani 9y ago
"Liulishuo raises approximately $100M in Series C funding to extend its lead in building smart AI English teachers" http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/liulishuo-raises-approximately-100m-in-series-c-funding-to-extend-its-lead-in-building-smart-ai-english-teachers-300494378.html http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/liulishuo-raises-app...

edoceo 9y ago

We have three vendors for $1 bikes in Seattle. Choose green, yellow or orange. Nearly zero difference. Now they are being abused (hung from poles, dumped in the lake, etc) What's going to become of these 1000s of bikes toward our long winter, all the casual sunny-day riders are gone.

kelukelugames 9y ago
I saw an adult riding one in the suburbs yesterday. Really weird to see an adult riding a bike without the full spandex gear.
- dilemma 9y ago
  Why?
SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
There was an article fairly recently on HN about how bike sharing is failing in San Francisco because it's so hilly. All the bikes would start at the top of hills and end up at the bottom and there was no system in place to relocate them back to the top.
- neves 9y ago
  In the somewhat hilly Madrid, the system is of electric bikes. In Paris, if you leave the bike in Montmartre (high hill) they give more time in your hide.
  - w-m 9y ago
    > In Paris, if you leave the bike in Montmartre (high hill) they give more time in your hide. This incentive seems to have little to no effect. Bike stations on top of the Paris hills (Montmartre, Belleville, Pantheon, ..) are almost always completely empty. It's not a huge issue in Paris as the city is mostly flat and you can walk down the hills within 5 minutes usually, finding a bike. The same system would fail miserably in a in a predominantly hilly city such as SF.

princeb 9y ago

melbourne and singapore are also seeing these problems. long story short, there are twats in every country. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/obike-responds-to-criticism-of-bike-sharing-scheme/8813574 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/obike-responds-to-crit... https://vulcanpost.com/608463/bike-sharing-singapore/ https://vulcanpost.com/608463/bike-sharing-singapore/

lostlogin 9y ago
Are you from the UK? It's usually munters who cause problems in NZ and Australia.
Gigablah 9y ago
Yeah, there were a few highly-publicized cases of bike vandalism in Singapore but thankfully it seems to be subsiding. I'm actually seeing a lot more bikes from multiple bike-sharing companies around my neighbourhood these days. It's definitely catching on.

nkrumm 9y ago

It's worth pointing out that that the Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) has been providing this sort of service for at least a decade (I remember seeing them parked outside of train stations in 2008): https://www.callabike-interaktiv.de/de/registrieren https://www.callabike-interaktiv.de/de/registrieren

denzil_correa 9y ago
There are many such bike sharing services in Germany like LidleBike [0] and NextBike [1]. But, I think it's relatively much more expensive than owning your own bike. [0] https://www.lidl-bike.de/de https://www.lidl-bike.de/de [1] https://www.nextbike.net/en/ https://www.nextbike.net/en/

CaliforniaKarl 9y ago

The Bay Area already has this, in the form of Google Bikes, which sometimes (often?) find their way off-campus. I have before come across one outside the entrance to my apartment building (the one I live in, I mean): The bike was standing on the walkway, obstructing it. I found that interesting, because the building has two underground secured area for bikes, and residents can take their bikes through to their apartments. You may reply "Well, where was the outside bike rack?" And you are right, there is none. But, in response I bring up the Whole Foods not too far away: They have a bike parking area, and the Google bike was parked not there. Of course, it's possible (likely?) that a Googler hadn't left it there: Someone could've taken it. Either way, I think the point still stands: You have effectively a station-less bike sharing plan, and bikes are ending up outside of where they're supposed to be. Does Google still do 20% projects? This seems like an interesting thing to study!

eungyu 9y ago

I just hope we don't sling shot back to individualistic ownership driven economy (as opposed to sharing economy). Sincerely hoping that after the dust settles there is a tiny bit of forward progress.

holri 9y ago

Vienna had this problem decades ago when the city donated a lot of gratis bikes without any registration / GPS whatsoever. Just take the bike and leave it anywhere. They replaced the system with a station based one with registration, and a small fee after 1 hour usage. This works well.

stevekemp 9y ago
That's similar to the system here in Helsinki. There are specific stations all over the city where you can collect/drop-off your bike. You get 30 minutes of free time each time you "checkout" a bike, and are charged extra if you go beyond that. People do seem to use the system sensibly, taking a bike to go somewhere. Doing their stuff, then taking a second bike home such that the don't keep the same one for >30 minutes to incur the extra (small) charges.
Rotareti 9y ago
Hamburg has these bikes too, since about 5 years or so. They have an App to unlock the bikes from a station. These stations are everywhere. It's such a nice addition to public transportation! And it's free for 30min, which is enough for most rides.
danieldk 9y ago
There was a gratis bicycle plan in Amsterdam in 1965 ('witte fietsenplan'): https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/26/story-cities-amsterdam-bike-share-scheme https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/26/story-cities-... Interestingly enough 'The free white bikes were quickly removed by the police, who were hostile to Provo’s anarchist initiatives. ' Also, apparently, they had a small-scale electric car-sharing system in 1974.

b6 9y ago

Rudeness and inconsiderateness are everywhere, but as anyone who has lived in China for a long period of time can tell you, it is endemic in China. I'm not aware of any place where the problem is generally thought to be as bad. Why, I don't know. The one-two punches of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution come to mind. As to why China was affected more than other places that suffered similar trauma, maybe it's because China is big enough that it can serve as its own world. Most Chinese people can choose to have no dealings with foreigners if they want, unlike somewhere like, say, Cambodia. The bikes certainly aren't causing some wave of inconsiderateness. It's just a more visible way for the extreme inconsiderateness of the general mentality in China to be expressed.

Taniwha 9y ago
I think there's a cultural thing going on here - in many places people are paid to sweep the streets so the city doesn't put out public trash cans ... people aren't being 'dirty' here, they just put their trash in different places (and yes I find it hard to throw stuff on the ground too, I hold on to it in China, I'm socialised that way)

paradite 9y ago

A universally applicable phenomenon where lack of ownership leads to uncivil behavior got caught in China due to its sheer scale of sharing economy and NYT says "Great material for China bashing. Make sure we get a good title to reflect how bad China is."

rixed 9y ago
There are also many users behaving properly. Do you have data showing that property does not yield to as much uncivil behavior? Like, for instance, do car owners behave better than shared bike owner?

chairmanwow 9y ago

I am currently living in Shanghai and I use Mobike, Ofo, or 赶赶单车 to get to work everyday. I have logged over 250km between the services. This article is largely unfair. The city has large swaths of sidewalk established as bike parking zones. I can almost always find a bike zone within 10-50m. Furthermore, there are almost always parking attendants and security guards outside of malls and subway stations ensuring that bikes are parked correctly. Even when these people aren't present, I rarely ever see bikes anywhere but the bike zones. And as much space as the bikes take up, it is NOTHING compared to the parked cars along the streets. Furthermore, I see company trucks collecting and relocating bikes multiple times per week. They are constantly shifting bikes of high supply to areas of demand. There are certain times of day (eg Saturday night at the Bund) where there are untold legions of bikes, but car traffic is flowing well. Many of the trips that I've taken on a Mobike were out of convenience. In American cities the fastest mode of transportation is almost always a car. However, because the bikes are essentially door-to-door with no delay, I can almost always beat a hired car because there is no delay and I can zip between waiting traffic. Chinese cities are being strangled to death by the crazy growth in car traffic. There has been insane immigration to cities and average income has gone way up. The net effect is a lot more car usage. Every taxi driver I have complains about the ever-worsening traffic conditions, year-over-year trip times increasing etc. Bike sharing does A LOT to alleviate this by providing a convenient, quick, and cheap ($0.10-0.20 / 30min) method to travel. This is all ignoring the obvious ecological impact of the many tons of CO2 not released by the saved hydrocarbon fueled trips.

sberder 9y ago
Living in Shanghai, closing on 2000km on mobike only. Try going to the flower market on wanhangdu lu and you'll get an idea of the abuse of both bikes and pavement. I love the service and I think it's a fantastic alternative to pubic transports/taxi/DiDi but you can't deny the absolute lack of care of a lot of users. I regularly see: * Bikes locked with a separate lock * Bikes parked inside compounds you can't access * Bikes parked inside a building on any given floor (it's normal here for people to park their bike or electric scooter just outside their door even in high rise) * Bikes parked on the street in the middle of traffic Even with those behaviors, those companies have completely reshaped the way people move in Chinese cities.

Proven 9y ago

LOL What's wrong is this: 1) the government teaches its people that Chinese culture is superior to others, and perfect too so they don't need to improve 2) this is aided by the fascistic control of the media so even those who might want to learn, can't 3) socialism - just like in the USA - is messing them up. I don't expect American socialists to understand, but libertarians have surely noticed the main problem in TFA is the lack of private property Most hilariously, I absolutely love to read these articles in leftist media who are always shocked that something doesn't work. Riot!

AhIDc7xgZ2 9y ago

Yawn. Another piece from the lying MSM attacking bikes and trains and transportation for the poor.

devmunchies 9y ago

This is a concept that you learn in an intro to economics class in college. People will abuse a free, limited resource. A sharing-based economy doesn't work.

xvilka 9y ago
It's not an economic issue, it's a human nature. Just most of the people lack morals, no matter what country. Sad, but true.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  "Just most of the people lack morals" Society wouldn't exist if that were the case, most problems are caused by a minority.
- esturk 9y ago
  What's easier to change? An business model or human nature? Clever people already know not to fight human nature and build their business models around it.
  - xvilka 9y ago
    I'm not saying we should change human nature, it's impossible at the one human life scale. Just correcting this is not exactly an economics. But yes, of course business model should just keep this in mind. Even sharing economy can adapt to this requirement and still be profitable.
nearmuse 9y ago
Lived in France for some time, and bike sharing works fairly well. From time to time I've seen vandalized/bad condition/abandoned bikes, but never at the scale described in this article. You authorize something to the tune of 150€ charged from your credit card if bike is not returned on time, which eliminates extreme carelessness. So this is clearly a problem with implementation and said startups, not the sharing economy. There are people who behave like that everywhere.

juiyout 9y ago

If there is money tied to rider's mannerism, I would be confident to predict that almost all the observed issues will be resolved.

askvictor 9y ago
I think they have the capacity to do this (o-bikes in Melbourne have similar issues), but haven't enabled it yet while trying to build up a customer base; additionally there is nothing to stop dickheads kicking over parked bikes for no particular reason.
barry-cotter 9y ago
There's a ¥300 deposit to get started with Mobike. You can get kicked from the service and lose your deposit for egregious behaviour. I recently forgot to lock a bike after use and lost 15 points from my account. You start off with a hundred points and get one per ride. If you go below 85 you pay much, much higher hourly rates than normal. All of these issues are soluble.

kisstheblade 9y ago

Recently visited china and noticed that the people there behave really filthy. They eat their lunches on the go when walking in the city, and when they are done they just dump the styrofoam containers and leftovers right there in the street. Then city workers collect them in huge stinky mounds waiting to be ferried of somewhere. Apparently city living is such a new concept there that a sence of community hasn't evolved and everybody at least would try to take care of the common spaces.

Markoff 9y ago
why wouldn't they throw it away if they know someone will clean it in few hours? or you have street sweepers unemployed? it's same with fast food, only ducks who wanna make fast food workers unemployed take their tray and trash from table in fast food chain knowing there is designated person collecting these trays and cleaning tables

m-i-l 9y ago

The problem of vandalism might be worse in the UK[0], e.g. "the scale of vandalism took him [Steve Pyer, Mobike UK's general manager] by surprise. It has been far worse than in any of the Asian countries where Mobike operates 5m bikes" [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche...

Baeocystin 9y ago

I found this video by ex-pat YouTuber Serpentza to be quite informative on the issue, and he has been living in China for long enough to have an insider's perspective. Well worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g

keithpeter 9y ago

The OA links to an article about dockless bike sharing in Manchester UK [1]. Quote from the Manchester article "On launch day, the Chinese designer told me the bikes were basically indestructible and should last four years without maintenance. It took a matter of hours before local scallies worked out how to disable the GPS trackers and smash off the back wheel locks." Truly "the street finds its own uses for things". The kids are hacking the bikes for fun and display of prowess which is normal-ish behaviour for adolescents. These objects suddenly arrived in the world, so the local teenagers decided to explore this new and interesting crop. The OA mentions New York city authorities sending cease and desist letters to a dock-less bike sharing company in the city. I'm hardly surprised, the pavements need active management at the best of times. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche...

rhaps0dy 9y ago

How about docked bike sharing? Barcelona has been having one for some time, it doesn't have many of the problems here, even though our suzhi is not very high. It does have the problem that you have to start and finish in a dock, but that seems minor.

lozenge 9y ago
The investment required is huge. On top of the costs for the bikes ($80 each) there's another $1000+ to install the docks. Not to mention the huge Chinese bureaucracy to navigate if you wanted to install docks in public spaces. https://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ITDP_Bike_Share_Planning_Guide.pdf https://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ITDP_Bike_Sh... (page 109)

usnigg 9y ago

I've been living in several European countries for the last 20+ years and believe me vandalism is far worse here than in any Asian country I've visited so far including China. I think this article is at best a good example of pointless journalism and at worst just another thinly veiled racist china bashing. Sad to see it gets so much attention on HN.

contingencies 9y ago

Here in Shenzhen where it is stinking hot all the damn time (we don't get freezing, snowy/sleeted, dust storms or 'normal') and windy/wet some of the time, there's government e-bike stations all about my area. Unfortunately I can't use them because they don't take foreign passport numbers. Otherwise, I would.

kirerukaze 9y ago
I live in Shenzhen and I use Mobike all the time. The biggest obstacle was getting a bank account to pay with. The identity verification process was to take a picture of your passport and a picture of you holding your passport, and then it took half a day for Mobike to verify the information.
- contingencies 9y ago
  Mobike != government system.

jaclaz 9y ago

Just in case, previous NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/asia/beijing-bike-sharing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/asia/beijing-bike-s... On other news, this summer, August, Mobike started being deployed in Florence and Milan, Italy: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-07/26/content_30250146.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-07/26/content_302... it is too early/too few bikes are in service yet, next test will be London: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/indyventure/mobike-china-bike-sharing-scheme-london-launch-boris-bicycles-no-docking-stations-santander-a7868916.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/indyventure/mobik... but I bet we'll soon see if Europeans will be more polite than the Chinese ... Manchester, UK, seems like having the same issues: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche... In any case the Chinese problems must be large enough to have the Government intervene: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-china-issues-bike-sharing-guidelines-complaints.html https://phys.org/news/2017-08-china-issues-bike-sharing-guid...

Rafert 9y ago

The introduction of similar oBikes in Amsterdam and Rotterdam prompted comments from my friends seeing similar bad behaviour. Meanwhile I live in Montreal, where with the Bixi bikes you need to return them to a station (spread throughout the city) and there's no problem.

jiyinyiyong 9y ago

Let's see what will happen outside China. Then compare them with data :P