bdooner

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/20...cycles/556268/

General Geoff

I hope they do something with those bikes before the elements turn them into giant piles of rust.

fireaza

Ideas are always great until you put them into practice and the realities of human nature ruins everything.

luddite_68

I like the blue one.

jimincalif

Must have been in one of Xi Jinping's 5-year plans. Market economies balance supply and demand a bit better than this.

Milton Keynes

What a waste... you could take all those bikes and have bike share programs in probably every city in the world. But like in China, those bikes would likely end up getting dumped somewhere.

Dirt Farmer

Dump them into the sea. No, seriously..... man made coral reefs / fish hiding zones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_reef

asmac

Sorry to rain on your parade but this was the result of pure, unbridled capitalist zeal. There is now an effort to regulate this industry as top players have gone broke. https://qz.com/1235417/bluegogo-and-...ness-in-china/

rumrunn6

I see it, but it's still hard to absorb the immense scale of this

Kedosto

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you!

LimeBikes are littering the streets of Alameda, turning previously decent folks into bonifide bike haters. The butt ugly lime colored pieces of cycling trash are nothing more than an eye sore, and are laying around the community like so many empty Starbucks cups.

Dock less bike sharing should be illegal.


-Kedosto

europa

Nah, razor blades

Rollfast

You saw that too? I posted that in A&S yesterday. It truly boggles the mind to think that none of them made it to Walmart.

dennis336

This post brought back some memories for me. I had the good fortune of traveling to Chine back in 1982 when the country was starting to open up for tourism. It was still in its infancy so you really felt like you were part of history. At that time, from what I recall hearing, private citizens still didn't own cars and people rode bicycles to get around. Funny how what goes around comes around in that they're now looking into bike-sharing to address traffic problems. I attached a picture of a 'parking area' for bikes in one of the cities we visited ... I don't think the concept of bike-sharing was yet in place so I assume these were people's bikes that they parked as they did their errands, etc.

Chine bicycle Pic.pdf

02Giant 

Domino's comes to mind. Give one a tip and see how far it goes.

KD5NRH

#13 raises two questions; first, what sort of repair is that, and second why would you repair what appears to be a rusty old single speed when you've got tens of thousands of practically new bikes piled up unused?
Then they all raise the question of how China hasn't yet posted container lots of rental bikes at $10 each on alibaba.com tons of used-but-functional parts at way below new cost on eBay, etc.
Reminds me of some photos from one of the radio groups, of thousands of $1700 (used price) Drake receivers piled on pallets, uncovered on an unused runway in the rain for months because nobody at whatever DoJ installation it was would assign them indoor storage space until they could be auctioned, and apparently even throwing tarps over them ended up in the "not my job" category.

CliffordK

This has been posted a few times before, but these are much better photographs, and showing a more widespread problem.

Apparently they had issues with "dockless" bikes. Ride, then dump anywhere.

I'm also not seeing any tracking on those bikes. The bike share bikes around here all have GPS systems with each bike, and I believe tracking so one can report a flat tire or maintenance issue with the bike when one drops it off. Mostly docked, but allowing undocked, but tracked.

I wonder if the government tried to provide FREE bikes for all. An ambitious project, but invariably leading to problems if not tracked in any manner.

Maelochs

This was done by several commercial entities (you know, 'businesses") which though they could capitalize on The overcrowding on Chimna's roads by bringing back the bike commuting which used to be ubiquitous.

All the companies wanted to have the most bikes so the odds would be greater that someone would grab one of there. Payment was made by smartphone-scanning an ID tag---people didn't car which company they supported so long as they had a ride, so numbers (supposedly) made the business more profitable.

Except they piled up everywhere---not so bad at subway stations, because they'd be there when everyone got off work---but of course the companies needed to have enough bikes so that when 10,000 were left at each subway station, there were still enough out there for everyone else---so each company needs two or three times as many bikes as it had riders.

Of course, most of the bikes were left in places where no one wanted them---sitting outside apartment complexes or whatever, inconveniently only available for the people who lived there. They also got dumped in parking spaces, on sidewalks, blocking narrow streets ... drop the bike at the market near home, walk home instead of trying to balance the bags on the bike.

Companies had to hire trucks to pick up discarded bikes, and had to hire crews to operate the trucks. Nobody cared about the bikes so they got abused, and didn't last as long as planned.

And so many companies tried to dominate with numbers .... there were a dozen bikes per rider.

And of course, most people would rather drive a cheap car than a cheap bike.

As for GPS tracking ... think of the cost for fleets that large---- and think how many people would steal the bike, strip the GPS unit, and sell it cheap and trash the bike.

SquidPuppet

That's pretty sad.

PdalPowr

I thought that as well but bike sharing is doing well where I live.
The bikes are too small for me and expensive to rent but
lots of folks like them.

Personally I prefer my own bike.
Maybe because I use it every day possible.

TimothyH

Those bikes are valuable just for the materials alone and won't be around for long.

Scrap metal is a hot commodity in China. They are the world's biggest importer of scrap metal because they can't mine it fast enough.

The article is a bit of drama. Notice that all the bikes are fenced in. They could have just as easily wrote about valuable scrap metal being safeguarded in locked enclosures or some such drama.

veganbikes

This is the fact of dockless bike shares. It is large companies who don't care about anything dumping trash onto our streets expecting us to clean it up for them. Melt them down into cannonballs and fire them at OFO, LimeBike Mobike and all the other dockless bikeshare headquarters.

TakingMyTime

Looks like someone accidentally put one too many zeros in the "Unit" column on that purchase order.

Kedosto

Exactly! The blow back on this bicycle dumping affects all cyclists.

Because of my year 'round bicycle commuting, I'm known in the hospital I work at as "the bike guy," and I've had so many people approach me with variations of "you bike people are dumping those ugly assed bikes all over our city..." I politely explain that I'm not involved nor condone such stupidity and encourage them to complain to their elected officials.


-Kedosto

Alleytom

Wow... And here I thought we had an issue with abandoned bike share bikes here in the valley.

PdalPowr

I had no idea it is that out of hand.
Our values have changed I guess.