8 ms·

Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

55 points by ArmandGrillet 9y ago

jmnicolas 9y ago
I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent. We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhabitants. The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown from the 14th floor etc etc We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes. Tax payer money well spent?
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > stolen and found in Africa That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to impress their peers.
  - kiliankoe 9y ago
    Same idea as stealing them in Germany and selling them further east. You're not going to find buyers locally, and shipping a lot of stolen bikes to somewhere where you can offload them for cheap is probably a somewhat viable business.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - Joeri 9y ago
    There was a very broadly reported crane theft a while ago in belgium. It was odd because nobody in western europe would buy a stolen crane. It turns out construction machines are often stolen and sold in africa where nobody checks the paperwork. Probably the same story applies to these bikes.
  - Torwald 9y ago
    If that was unexpected to you, I'll take it you don't know France very well. People send stuff back to Africa all the time. I can't say anything about the bike (obviously), but I can tell you what an African friend of mine does for a living; in the middle of Europe. He sends stuff back to Africa. What he does is he rents out a container on a ship and then collects the payload in small units. I advertises in the African community (mainly Togo) and sells small amount of space on that container. People want to send stuff to their relatives on the continent all the time. I hope my mildly related anecdote was helpful.
    - nitrogen 9y ago
      In inland southern California there is (or was, last time I was there) a Polynesian community that's established enough for similar container-shipping companies to arise to send things to their families still on the islands.
  - donttrack 9y ago
    Was in Paris last year. I thought I was in Africa..
- retox 9y ago
  What is the ethnic makeup of that town, if you don't mind my asking.
smallnamespace 9y ago
This is not a huge surprise—China has very low rates of street crime, which is why the 'leave a bike anywhere' model isn't destroyed by vandalism. Increasingly, as Chinese companies try to expand abroad (valuations are so inflated in China that diversifying geographically is very tempting, much like 80s Japan), they are going to stumble a bit due to less familiarity with other societies, e.g. [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/economy/ohio-factory-jobs-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/economy/ohio-fac...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  It’s near the end of this article, Chinese bikeshare companies are having similar vandalism experiences in China: https://qz.com/919739/chinese-bike-sharing-startups-like-ofo-and-mobike-are-being-taken-for-a-ride-by-thieves-vandals-and-cheapskates/ https://qz.com/919739/chinese-bike-sharing-startups-like-ofo...
- ysleepy 9y ago
  I think you have a warped impression of china. Bike sharing in china: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYu4wzy9Lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYu4wzy9Lw
Gpugnet 9y ago
What did they expect ? Criminality is high in France, and higher in Paris.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Got some figures to back up that claim? http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/United-States/Crime http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/Unit...
  - tonfa 9y ago
    Esp. since cities like Zurich are also facing similar backlash against dockless bike invasion.
  - roddux 9y ago
    Unless my reading comprehension has taken a serious dive this morning, all the sources NationMaster lists appear to be a good 5 to 10 years out of date. In other words, that would exclude information about crimes since the recent demographic changes that Paris has experienced.
    - arnaud12 9y ago
      What changes are you referring to?
  - ggg9990 9y ago
    First, you’re comparing to the United States which is a very high-crime developed country. Second, this data is before France let in zillions of refugees and other Arabs who commit far more crime than white French.
    - dang 9y ago
      Race war and religious war are off topic on Hacker News. This amounts to trolling. Please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
wiradikusuma 9y ago
There's another bike company here in (SE)Asia, OBike. They're pretty big, and aggressively fundraising. I told my wife, "I can understand that people want to Uber-ify everything, but this is very different than Uber concept, so I think it won't work in the long term." The main difference is.. who's looking after the vehicle. With Uber, the vehicle is typically owned by the driver, so the driver has interest in making sure the customers (riders) don't vandalize it. Not only that, it's in the driver's best interest to keep the vehicle maintained. With these bike sharing companies, nobody except the company owns the bike. And since nobody is watching over the customers, they don't feel the need to behave. You can say, "Just force them to put deposit, and if the bike is damaged, deduct their deposit." Well, how do you know if the bike is damaged by them, and not random bypassers?
- k_lander 9y ago
  You can say, "Just force them to put deposit, and if the bike is damaged, deduct their deposit." Well, how do you know if the bike is damaged by them, and not random bypassers? You don't but the point of the deposit is simply to act as a deterrent. When your deposit is on the line, you have an incentive to look after the bike while it is in your possession. You wouldn't purposely seek to damage it if it is going to cost you. It takes the "fun" out of vandalising and that is usually sufficient.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    The people who take joy in vandalizing things will have no fear in a deposit especially since it’s impossible to prove if they vandalized anything.
steinerj 9y ago
I'm surprised... Cologne, Germany has dockless bike rental for more than a decade, but none of the operators complain about excessive vandalism. Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France. The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a tank'. There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable. Maybe they gathered enough and are on their way out?
- kiliankoe 9y ago
  The story I've been hearing is that the sole idea behind most chinese bikesharing companies outside of China is to move vast sums of money out of the country, even if that means dealing with quite a few losses. Obviously just a theory, but I find it amusing.
- londons_explore 9y ago
  They make a massive amount of money from rental deposits which are never refunded unless you remember to click the refund button in the app. A lot of people forget to refund their own deposit, and the rental company gets to keep a lot of money.
  - mcmacintosh 9y ago
    A great deal of the deposits are made during discount/promotional periods.
- tonfa 9y ago
  Maybe the difference is that one worked with the city / people to set it up, and the other mostly dumped a bunch of bikes everywhere? (and doesn't pay for any of the negative externalities that comes with it).
  - icebraining 9y ago
    People have been known to throw bikes of the city-sanctioned system (Velib) in the river too. Apparently 16000 were vandalized in the first two years of operation alone.
Ecco 9y ago
For some reason nobody talks about the extreme nuisance of those bikes. Customers would just drop them literally anywhere: on the sidewalk blocking pedestrians, right in the middle of the street blocking cars, in front of building doors preventing people from entering, etc... Such a terrible nuisance, and something to be expected since there is such little room in the Parisian streets (you can’t seriously expect customers to drop their bike in a proper location if there are so few of them). Long story short, I’m glad to see them go, even though I would have preferred them to be banned rather than vandalized.
- INTPenis 9y ago
  This is a very interesting point that I wouldn't have understood without your perspective. I'm from a city with lots of space so their rental bikes are never in the way. They're always in a proper place. Also they have a system that you must return the bike to one of the rental stations within the allotted time. If you don't do that you will get a fine since you must use your personal info to rent them.
- stinos 9y ago
  nuisance of those bikes Well, actually, the nuissance of the people not knowing how/where to put the bike away properly and/or being too lazy to do so or just being too selfish and not caring about others at all. Just like there's always this couple of car drivers parking where they shouldn't etc. But with these bikes it's just way easier to do. Just like it's also way easier for you or any one else to pick up the bike and put it away 2m further if that's less annoying, which is what I'd do if it would be in my way. In the end I think the only solution is a mentality shift and more bikes, contradictory as that may sound. When enough people realize their behaviour is super annoying they might actually do something about it. In cities with a thousand times more bikes than in Paris there aren't too much problems like this because most are in the same boat. there is such little room in the Parisian streets Hmm, I'm not sure what part of the city exactly you're talking about and yes there aren't too many official bike parkings but in general I'd say there's plenty of room to tuck away a couple of bikes. Perhaps not always right in front of the place one wants to be, but still..
  - 9y ago
londons_explore 9y ago
I have met a few people who have a very personal vendetta against these bike rental companies. They see them as cluttering the streets and operating without the proper licencing and permissions. To rectify the issue, they will happily throw 50 bikes into the river each time they pass a parking area. They see it as doing the government/the people a favour. The guy I spoke to who did this didn't have a smartphone, so I would guess hadn't even used the scheme.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  Eh. The government sure seems like a sect. I don't mean by itself, but some people treat it like one, and are becoming a part of the sect they've made up in their heads. Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote.
  - teh_klev 9y ago
    > Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      I didn't get any new downvotes after the edit, but I don't really care about the downvotes, it's the lack of explanation that bugs me. I never edited comments like this until one month ago because there was no need, but that changed since around half a year ago when I noticed that instead of participating in a discussion, people just downvote. I don't think that the purpose of downvotes should be to disagree without saying anything, that creates a very toxic environment, so I'm trying to encourage people to discuss. Also, I didn't comment about voting. I replied to a comment and then added a line about the downvotes later (after I got downvoted without any explanation) because I don't feel good in this kind of environment. Edit: apparently now I'm "posting too fast" (2 comments per hour is fast? OK...), so there's my reply to the child comment that says it seems trollish: "Yeah I agree - if there wasn't the explanatory sentence after that. You can't just downvote the whole comment based on its first sentence, it has a completely different meaning without the rest."
J-dawg 9y ago
Do “dockless” bike hire systems actually work anywhere? There seem to have been so many stories like this. Docked systems seem to work really well (e.g. London), presumably because you can’t take a bike without leaving your credit card details.
- roddux 9y ago
  'Dockless' bikes have recently made a large appearance in London, too. They're suddenly everywhere, little orange ones. I'm not sure if it's the same company but it's the exactly the same principle. I'm quite surprised there are any left when seemingly the bike can be freed with a small bolt cutter.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    From what I've read about the type of bicycles used by these companies in the Netherlands, the bicycles themselves are pretty awful for any serious use beyond moving tourists a mile or so across a flat surface without any wind or rain. Also, if you bought a stolen one from a fence, you would be riding a branded bicycle (probably adorned with your own lock instead of the original 'smart' one) and look like a right git. They just don't appear to be very attractive to thieves.
- morsch 9y ago
  I think it's been working fine in Berlin for fifteen years.
- cuonic 9y ago
  I used the Gobee.bike rental service in both Turin and Milan, and the only vandalism I encountered were two bikes that had been thrown into the Navigli canal, other than that it didn't appear to be much of a problem in Italy. For the French market maybe they need to look into attaching the device to a physical object (lamp post, docking station), other than just locking the rear wheel, to keep the oppurtunists at bay.
  - boudin 9y ago
Tharkun 9y ago
There's only so much space in cities. Getting rid of bikes is the wrong move. Cars take up so much more space and cause a plethora of negative effects. Interesting to see that this approach of vandalism is working. It's a shame people aren't physically strong enough to throw cars into rivers and from rooftops. Perhaps then Paris could be rid of its car problem.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Are you really suggesting Paris might be short on bicycles now?
  - jpl56 9y ago
    (Parisian writing) Yes! We used to have plenty of Velib installations everywhere in the city and its suburbs. Now we have to wait for the new operator to have their system work. Even when the station is finished and has bikes on it, they aren't always usable.
- davidzweig 9y ago
  Yes, that's a nice idea. No cars in the city. Pedestrianise half the streets. Plant some trees. Double the number of busses (electric? China has lots). Allow delivery vehicles between certain hours. I think it'd be great.. much less traffic noise, easier to cycle, more public spaces. Maybe it'd be like the photos of Eastern Europe in the 70s/80s, with wide empty streets. I enjoy my car, but not in the city, and when most people in a city drive, it must be a net loss.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    That would be amazing. I'm hoping Copenhagen gets there in my lifetime.
Torai 9y ago
Same story again. Engineers designing things or companies without considering the human factor, just cause they lack that knowledge.
grey-sunshine 9y ago
Muslim immigrants helped a lot I see.
Theodores 9y ago
I wonder who these bikes are supposed to appeal to. If you are a cyclist then you have your own bicycle, or you have a choice of bicycles. You don't leave the door with your bike left behind so you can take the heavier, possibly vandalised, possibly unavailable public transport bike in order to get to your destination later. Sometimes when catching the train I cannot take a bicycle. In theory I could hire a bike at the far end and just leave my bike at the start station. However, this I never think to do. I might think of getting a bus or even a taxi but I would never think to get a hire bike. Even though there is a rack of them outside the station. Out of my non-cycling friends, the people that drive to work or just walk, these people have not taken their bicycles out of the shed for many, many years. They are no likely to re-orient their entire commuting experience around some hire bikes as they decided a long time ago that being on the streets with no crumple zones was not for them. I do know people that do get about on Boris bikes once in a while, as a fun way to get around London with friends on a weekend, but not as part of a serious commute. There are better ways to get bikes on the road, the bike to work tax free scheme being one of them. This has got a lot of people cycling in the UK. It is also about time that normal bicycles are a bit more legally sensible. With cars we no longer allow 1970's standards (e,g, no seat belts). I am not saying we add airbags to bicycles but we could update the law so bicycles have to have lights the minute they get put in the showroom, mandatory and part of the bike. LED lighting makes that doable. Similarly, tyres could be made to be 'road legal' with some puncture protection made mandatory. There could also be a small tax benefit for bicycles designed for utility purpose, taxed differently to the sport bikes that have no mudguards. With a lower tax on 'utility' bikes a subtle shaping of bikes sold could result in safer roads with more people riding year round, mostly for commuting reasons. People would be able to pay the extra for their carbon fibre road bikes that don't have the lights, mudguards and sensible lock, that would be standard VAT, not the bargain 'utility' rate. A defined 'utility' bike that is personally owned could be insured very differently to a 'sports' bicycle, perhaps more affordably, with reasonable third party cover. Meanwhile 'fixies' such as that one that was involved in a tragic accident killing a pedestrian, those bikes would not be as cheap to ride or likely to be so prevalent on the roads.
- devit 9y ago
  The main advantage is that you can combine them with public transportation: you take a dockless bike to an underground/bus station, then once you get off you take another dockless bike to the destination, which effectively gives you very cheap and very fast transportation from anywhere to anywhere. The other advantages are not having to worry about theft, being able to get a bike wherever you are even if you didn't anticipate it, and being able to get somewhere by bike and go back in a car with someone else or vice versa.
notracist 9y ago
Now some racist will come and pull up stats about African immigrants doing this. People please, stop. Facts have no place here. Don't trigger us. African immigrants, are single young adults running away from terrible conditions that caused them to lose their women and kids, and are coming to enrich Europe. Don't scare them. Give them your daughters.
xxgxhxxjd 9y ago
Looks like notracist has been downvoted to hell by racists already.
- dang 9y ago
  Trolling HN like this will get your main account banned as well.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
misja111 9y ago
A similar thing is happening in Switzerland: http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Schweizer-sehen-O-Bike-als--chinesische-Invasion--20959843 http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Schweizer-sehen-O-Bik... (in German). Apparently some people see the rental bikes from this company, O-bike, as an unwanted Chinese intrusion into their country.

55 points by ArmandGrillet 9y ago

I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent. We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhabitants. The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown from the 14th floor etc etc We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes. Tax payer money well spent?

rdtsc 9y ago
> stolen and found in Africa That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to impress their peers.
- kiliankoe 9y ago
  Same idea as stealing them in Germany and selling them further east. You're not going to find buyers locally, and shipping a lot of stolen bikes to somewhere where you can offload them for cheap is probably a somewhat viable business.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Joeri 9y ago
  There was a very broadly reported crane theft a while ago in belgium. It was odd because nobody in western europe would buy a stolen crane. It turns out construction machines are often stolen and sold in africa where nobody checks the paperwork. Probably the same story applies to these bikes.
- Torwald 9y ago
  If that was unexpected to you, I'll take it you don't know France very well. People send stuff back to Africa all the time. I can't say anything about the bike (obviously), but I can tell you what an African friend of mine does for a living; in the middle of Europe. He sends stuff back to Africa. What he does is he rents out a container on a ship and then collects the payload in small units. I advertises in the African community (mainly Togo) and sells small amount of space on that container. People want to send stuff to their relatives on the continent all the time. I hope my mildly related anecdote was helpful.
  - nitrogen 9y ago
    In inland southern California there is (or was, last time I was there) a Polynesian community that's established enough for similar container-shipping companies to arise to send things to their families still on the islands.
- donttrack 9y ago
  Was in Paris last year. I thought I was in Africa..
retox 9y ago
What is the ethnic makeup of that town, if you don't mind my asking.

smallnamespace 9y ago

This is not a huge surprise—China has very low rates of street crime, which is why the 'leave a bike anywhere' model isn't destroyed by vandalism. Increasingly, as Chinese companies try to expand abroad (valuations are so inflated in China that diversifying geographically is very tempting, much like 80s Japan), they are going to stumble a bit due to less familiarity with other societies, e.g. [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/economy/ohio-factory-jobs-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/economy/ohio-fac...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
CodeWriter23 9y ago
It’s near the end of this article, Chinese bikeshare companies are having similar vandalism experiences in China: https://qz.com/919739/chinese-bike-sharing-startups-like-ofo-and-mobike-are-being-taken-for-a-ride-by-thieves-vandals-and-cheapskates/ https://qz.com/919739/chinese-bike-sharing-startups-like-ofo...
ysleepy 9y ago
I think you have a warped impression of china. Bike sharing in china: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYu4wzy9Lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYu4wzy9Lw

Gpugnet 9y ago

What did they expect ? Criminality is high in France, and higher in Paris.

voltagex_ 9y ago
Got some figures to back up that claim? http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/United-States/Crime http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/Unit...
- tonfa 9y ago
  Esp. since cities like Zurich are also facing similar backlash against dockless bike invasion.
- roddux 9y ago
  Unless my reading comprehension has taken a serious dive this morning, all the sources NationMaster lists appear to be a good 5 to 10 years out of date. In other words, that would exclude information about crimes since the recent demographic changes that Paris has experienced.
  - arnaud12 9y ago
    What changes are you referring to?
- ggg9990 9y ago
  First, you’re comparing to the United States which is a very high-crime developed country. Second, this data is before France let in zillions of refugees and other Arabs who commit far more crime than white French.
  - dang 9y ago
    Race war and religious war are off topic on Hacker News. This amounts to trolling. Please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

wiradikusuma 9y ago

There's another bike company here in (SE)Asia, OBike. They're pretty big, and aggressively fundraising. I told my wife, "I can understand that people want to Uber-ify everything, but this is very different than Uber concept, so I think it won't work in the long term." The main difference is.. who's looking after the vehicle. With Uber, the vehicle is typically owned by the driver, so the driver has interest in making sure the customers (riders) don't vandalize it. Not only that, it's in the driver's best interest to keep the vehicle maintained. With these bike sharing companies, nobody except the company owns the bike. And since nobody is watching over the customers, they don't feel the need to behave. You can say, "Just force them to put deposit, and if the bike is damaged, deduct their deposit." Well, how do you know if the bike is damaged by them, and not random bypassers?

k_lander 9y ago
You can say, "Just force them to put deposit, and if the bike is damaged, deduct their deposit." Well, how do you know if the bike is damaged by them, and not random bypassers? You don't but the point of the deposit is simply to act as a deterrent. When your deposit is on the line, you have an incentive to look after the bike while it is in your possession. You wouldn't purposely seek to damage it if it is going to cost you. It takes the "fun" out of vandalising and that is usually sufficient.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  The people who take joy in vandalizing things will have no fear in a deposit especially since it’s impossible to prove if they vandalized anything.

steinerj 9y ago

I'm surprised... Cologne, Germany has dockless bike rental for more than a decade, but none of the operators complain about excessive vandalism. Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France. The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a tank'. There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable. Maybe they gathered enough and are on their way out?

kiliankoe 9y ago
The story I've been hearing is that the sole idea behind most chinese bikesharing companies outside of China is to move vast sums of money out of the country, even if that means dealing with quite a few losses. Obviously just a theory, but I find it amusing.
londons_explore 9y ago
They make a massive amount of money from rental deposits which are never refunded unless you remember to click the refund button in the app. A lot of people forget to refund their own deposit, and the rental company gets to keep a lot of money.
- mcmacintosh 9y ago
  A great deal of the deposits are made during discount/promotional periods.
tonfa 9y ago
Maybe the difference is that one worked with the city / people to set it up, and the other mostly dumped a bunch of bikes everywhere? (and doesn't pay for any of the negative externalities that comes with it).
- icebraining 9y ago
  People have been known to throw bikes of the city-sanctioned system (Velib) in the river too. Apparently 16000 were vandalized in the first two years of operation alone.

Ecco 9y ago

For some reason nobody talks about the extreme nuisance of those bikes. Customers would just drop them literally anywhere: on the sidewalk blocking pedestrians, right in the middle of the street blocking cars, in front of building doors preventing people from entering, etc... Such a terrible nuisance, and something to be expected since there is such little room in the Parisian streets (you can’t seriously expect customers to drop their bike in a proper location if there are so few of them). Long story short, I’m glad to see them go, even though I would have preferred them to be banned rather than vandalized.

INTPenis 9y ago
This is a very interesting point that I wouldn't have understood without your perspective. I'm from a city with lots of space so their rental bikes are never in the way. They're always in a proper place. Also they have a system that you must return the bike to one of the rental stations within the allotted time. If you don't do that you will get a fine since you must use your personal info to rent them.
stinos 9y ago
nuisance of those bikes Well, actually, the nuissance of the people not knowing how/where to put the bike away properly and/or being too lazy to do so or just being too selfish and not caring about others at all. Just like there's always this couple of car drivers parking where they shouldn't etc. But with these bikes it's just way easier to do. Just like it's also way easier for you or any one else to pick up the bike and put it away 2m further if that's less annoying, which is what I'd do if it would be in my way. In the end I think the only solution is a mentality shift and more bikes, contradictory as that may sound. When enough people realize their behaviour is super annoying they might actually do something about it. In cities with a thousand times more bikes than in Paris there aren't too much problems like this because most are in the same boat. there is such little room in the Parisian streets Hmm, I'm not sure what part of the city exactly you're talking about and yes there aren't too many official bike parkings but in general I'd say there's plenty of room to tuck away a couple of bikes. Perhaps not always right in front of the place one wants to be, but still..
- 9y ago

londons_explore 9y ago

I have met a few people who have a very personal vendetta against these bike rental companies. They see them as cluttering the streets and operating without the proper licencing and permissions. To rectify the issue, they will happily throw 50 bikes into the river each time they pass a parking area. They see it as doing the government/the people a favour. The guy I spoke to who did this didn't have a smartphone, so I would guess hadn't even used the scheme.

TomMarius 9y ago
Eh. The government sure seems like a sect. I don't mean by itself, but some people treat it like one, and are becoming a part of the sect they've made up in their heads. Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote.
- teh_klev 9y ago
  > Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    I didn't get any new downvotes after the edit, but I don't really care about the downvotes, it's the lack of explanation that bugs me. I never edited comments like this until one month ago because there was no need, but that changed since around half a year ago when I noticed that instead of participating in a discussion, people just downvote. I don't think that the purpose of downvotes should be to disagree without saying anything, that creates a very toxic environment, so I'm trying to encourage people to discuss. Also, I didn't comment about voting. I replied to a comment and then added a line about the downvotes later (after I got downvoted without any explanation) because I don't feel good in this kind of environment. Edit: apparently now I'm "posting too fast" (2 comments per hour is fast? OK...), so there's my reply to the child comment that says it seems trollish: "Yeah I agree - if there wasn't the explanatory sentence after that. You can't just downvote the whole comment based on its first sentence, it has a completely different meaning without the rest."

J-dawg 9y ago

Do “dockless” bike hire systems actually work anywhere? There seem to have been so many stories like this. Docked systems seem to work really well (e.g. London), presumably because you can’t take a bike without leaving your credit card details.

roddux 9y ago
'Dockless' bikes have recently made a large appearance in London, too. They're suddenly everywhere, little orange ones. I'm not sure if it's the same company but it's the exactly the same principle. I'm quite surprised there are any left when seemingly the bike can be freed with a small bolt cutter.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  From what I've read about the type of bicycles used by these companies in the Netherlands, the bicycles themselves are pretty awful for any serious use beyond moving tourists a mile or so across a flat surface without any wind or rain. Also, if you bought a stolen one from a fence, you would be riding a branded bicycle (probably adorned with your own lock instead of the original 'smart' one) and look like a right git. They just don't appear to be very attractive to thieves.
morsch 9y ago
I think it's been working fine in Berlin for fifteen years.
cuonic 9y ago
I used the Gobee.bike rental service in both Turin and Milan, and the only vandalism I encountered were two bikes that had been thrown into the Navigli canal, other than that it didn't appear to be much of a problem in Italy. For the French market maybe they need to look into attaching the device to a physical object (lamp post, docking station), other than just locking the rear wheel, to keep the oppurtunists at bay.
- boudin 9y ago

Tharkun 9y ago

There's only so much space in cities. Getting rid of bikes is the wrong move. Cars take up so much more space and cause a plethora of negative effects. Interesting to see that this approach of vandalism is working. It's a shame people aren't physically strong enough to throw cars into rivers and from rooftops. Perhaps then Paris could be rid of its car problem.

gt_ 9y ago
Are you really suggesting Paris might be short on bicycles now?
- jpl56 9y ago
  (Parisian writing) Yes! We used to have plenty of Velib installations everywhere in the city and its suburbs. Now we have to wait for the new operator to have their system work. Even when the station is finished and has bikes on it, they aren't always usable.
davidzweig 9y ago
Yes, that's a nice idea. No cars in the city. Pedestrianise half the streets. Plant some trees. Double the number of busses (electric? China has lots). Allow delivery vehicles between certain hours. I think it'd be great.. much less traffic noise, easier to cycle, more public spaces. Maybe it'd be like the photos of Eastern Europe in the 70s/80s, with wide empty streets. I enjoy my car, but not in the city, and when most people in a city drive, it must be a net loss.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  That would be amazing. I'm hoping Copenhagen gets there in my lifetime.

Torai 9y ago

Same story again. Engineers designing things or companies without considering the human factor, just cause they lack that knowledge.

grey-sunshine 9y ago

Muslim immigrants helped a lot I see.

Theodores 9y ago

I wonder who these bikes are supposed to appeal to. If you are a cyclist then you have your own bicycle, or you have a choice of bicycles. You don't leave the door with your bike left behind so you can take the heavier, possibly vandalised, possibly unavailable public transport bike in order to get to your destination later. Sometimes when catching the train I cannot take a bicycle. In theory I could hire a bike at the far end and just leave my bike at the start station. However, this I never think to do. I might think of getting a bus or even a taxi but I would never think to get a hire bike. Even though there is a rack of them outside the station. Out of my non-cycling friends, the people that drive to work or just walk, these people have not taken their bicycles out of the shed for many, many years. They are no likely to re-orient their entire commuting experience around some hire bikes as they decided a long time ago that being on the streets with no crumple zones was not for them. I do know people that do get about on Boris bikes once in a while, as a fun way to get around London with friends on a weekend, but not as part of a serious commute. There are better ways to get bikes on the road, the bike to work tax free scheme being one of them. This has got a lot of people cycling in the UK. It is also about time that normal bicycles are a bit more legally sensible. With cars we no longer allow 1970's standards (e,g, no seat belts). I am not saying we add airbags to bicycles but we could update the law so bicycles have to have lights the minute they get put in the showroom, mandatory and part of the bike. LED lighting makes that doable. Similarly, tyres could be made to be 'road legal' with some puncture protection made mandatory. There could also be a small tax benefit for bicycles designed for utility purpose, taxed differently to the sport bikes that have no mudguards. With a lower tax on 'utility' bikes a subtle shaping of bikes sold could result in safer roads with more people riding year round, mostly for commuting reasons. People would be able to pay the extra for their carbon fibre road bikes that don't have the lights, mudguards and sensible lock, that would be standard VAT, not the bargain 'utility' rate. A defined 'utility' bike that is personally owned could be insured very differently to a 'sports' bicycle, perhaps more affordably, with reasonable third party cover. Meanwhile 'fixies' such as that one that was involved in a tragic accident killing a pedestrian, those bikes would not be as cheap to ride or likely to be so prevalent on the roads.

devit 9y ago
The main advantage is that you can combine them with public transportation: you take a dockless bike to an underground/bus station, then once you get off you take another dockless bike to the destination, which effectively gives you very cheap and very fast transportation from anywhere to anywhere. The other advantages are not having to worry about theft, being able to get a bike wherever you are even if you didn't anticipate it, and being able to get somewhere by bike and go back in a car with someone else or vice versa.

notracist 9y ago

Now some racist will come and pull up stats about African immigrants doing this. People please, stop. Facts have no place here. Don't trigger us. African immigrants, are single young adults running away from terrible conditions that caused them to lose their women and kids, and are coming to enrich Europe. Don't scare them. Give them your daughters.

xxgxhxxjd 9y ago

Looks like notracist has been downvoted to hell by racists already.

dang 9y ago
Trolling HN like this will get your main account banned as well.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

misja111 9y ago

A similar thing is happening in Switzerland: http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Schweizer-sehen-O-Bike-als--chinesische-Invasion--20959843 http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Schweizer-sehen-O-Bik... (in German). Apparently some people see the rental bikes from this company, O-bike, as an unwanted Chinese intrusion into their country.