Tundra_Man 

Came across this article this morning. The growth of China's bike share industry outpaced demand and as a result they're left with stockpiles of unused bike share bicycles.

I was pretty amazed at the photos and figured others would be as well:

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

RoadKill

The way bike share is going here in Tempe/Scottsdale/Mesa/Phoenix I can see how this happens. Bikes are abandoned everywhere, people throw them in canals, over fences, off bridges... If people were more considerate I could see bike share being a great thing.

nasabiker

Personal ownership is a great thing, its why communism doesn't work. because people don't respect what isn't theirs.

Darth Lefty 

Indeed there is a lot of everything in China.

Gresp15C

In my view this is just the result of an investment boom, where people were throwing money at this nascent business without really thinking about whether the business made sense. The only way they could do anything with the money, and keep the business going so they could attract more investment money, was to build more and more bikes.

Look up "dot com bubble" in the US. This is capitalism at its finest.

Somebody basically fleeced a bunch of investors.

noglider 

We may be looking at proof that dockless bike shares are a bad business model. We don't have that in NYC, but we have a hugely successful bike sharing program called Citi Bike. It has problems, and they are all results of the level of unexpected success.

mgw4jc

Fascinating and depressing.

Shimagnolo

aka Tragedy of the Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

alan s 

This is why I never advocate for more bikes and bikes sharing. The fewer the bikes the better. Force everyone who doesn’t drive onto public transportation.

Gresp15C

A simple incentive to take care of the bike when you're done with it makes all the difference. But the infrastructure requires some level of regulation and planning. (Yes it sounds odd to praise NYC for being more regulated than China, but that's exactly what happened here).

Even Madison has a successful bike share program. I gauge the success by the number of empty racks that I see, which means people are using the bikes. I see the bikes in places that suggest to me that they are used by tourists, in addition to the locals.

Darth Lefty 

This wasn’t really a communism problem, though. The goods weren’t common, they were for rent. There was no obligation implied for riders to fix the bikes, they were paid for. This was a bubble.

nasabiker

Not sating it was a communist plan, but the underlying issue of the bike share and in communism is that personal responsibility is removed from the equation. somebody else will do it- and that somebody else never does becuz- somebody else will do it. and in the case of the dockless bikeshare, bikes are just thrown everywhere including rivers. at least with docking you are responsible for putting back in an authorized spot lest ye be relinquished of thine monetary goods.

nasabiker

interesting, I didn't know there was a "term" associated with the idea

Stadjer

You've got a point there with personal responsability, but this is exactly why this is a typical neoliberal/laissez faire problem, therefore at the opposite side of the political spectrum. It's the companies that refuse to take any 'personal' responsability for the public space they used freely and ended up polluting freely. Their business plan was to freeload on the roads, sidewalks and squares paid for by society. The cost was to society, not to be deducted from the company's profit.

Another part of the problem lies in the typical inefficiencies of free market competition. Company failure is part of the deal, all of them need to grow fast and become a big player for their business model to work, and they can't make it all so society will end up with bankrupt companies and the mess they leave behind. That could have happened to docked bike shares too, it would just be a more orderly mess.

I do agree though that personal ownership is better, especially for something with such a small footprint as a bike.

Tombaatar

I was thinking capitalism practiced by nubes more than a result of communzism

rm -rf

Just like stupid dot com investments. Trying to overwhelm the competition with cash.

A shared GPS tracked bike that can be left anywhere sounds great, but it's not going to work. Too much clutter, with parked bikes jamming up sidewalks. They don't require the bikes to be locked? That's just an invitation to trash them.

~~~

B-Cycle runs the bike shares in many US cities. Now, it requires an expensive locking rack, making new stations costly and hard to change later. My B-Cycle subscription is great for going to parks or downtown. I can park at the bike station, and not have to worry about the bike any longer. It's easy to make spur of the moment stops, then get another bike later.

They have plans for a new bike, with GPS locating built in. And the bike basket has a giant integrated U-lock for temporary locking while shopping, etc.

These can be set up to use locking racks, or lock to low cost standard bike racks within a "geo-fenced" area close to a bike station sign, or even locked anywhere, like the Chinese bikes.

I think the simple stations with low cost bike racks will work great, and the leave-anywhere methods will be banned.

robertorolfo

This is a very interesting phenomenon and conversation.

There are several factors at play here, but as many have pointed out, personal responsibility seems to be the common denominator. You have end users acting irresponsibly, you have business owners/managers acting irresponsibly, and you have investors acting irresponsibly. Lot's of "bad actors" that either don't care about how their behavior affects others, or are willing to put their personal needs ahead of those of other people, or even to the detriment of other people.

It only takes a few jerks to ruin things for the good people, and unfortunately it seems like there are a lot of jerks out there. On top of that, certain economic and political structures seem to further encourage bad behavior (the whole, "move fast and break things" mantra comes to mind).

I could go on, but then it would start to get political. Suffice to say, many people see the US (and perhaps China as well), as the Wild West when it comes to doing business. They think anything goes, and now we are attracting people from all over the world with that mentality.


It does seem to be working well, but is it financially self-sustaining? I haven't seen the numbers, but I was under the impression that the city (with a Y!) was injecting money to get it going.

I also know that it isn't cheap! Unless you do the longer term subscriptions, I don't find it very practical to use it on an occasional basis. (This was actually a blessing in disguise for me, because it prompted me to buy my own bike for city use, and now I'm here...)

Oilsausage

wow, thanks for posting

Tundra_Man 

Here are some more recent photos: China Is Still Sorting Through Its Colorful Bike-Share Graveyards

AusTexMurf

+1
Capitalism bubble, for profit ventures w/o understanding of their markets and targeted customers.
Nor from the manufacturers and their investors.
More communal would be to leave them out for free use in locations where the operations failed. And every feasible location in China as viable and available transportation instead of the mass graveyards, waiting to be recycled at profitable margins.
Saw these photos and related article posted on our local social cycling facebook page last week.
Crazy imagery, bit depressing but makes you think about another problem in our global community, how it does indeed relate to capitalism, and may generate new ideas on how we can do things better going forward. As individuals and in our own cities and communities.
Also made me think of how bikeshare programs/companies and the bicycle industry in general are related to China's aluminum and other recycling industries affected/related to recent US trade tariffs in the now and future.

starkmojo

Which is why fire departments, libraries, Public sewers and Utility districts are all such abysmal failures./s

RubeRad

Or remove the gps/locking parts to make them just regular bikes, and sell them for like $5, $10 each or whatever is an appropriate price so they get snapped up and resold.

Or best of all, give them to a charity that provides bikes in third-world countries. I recently listened to an outspoken cyclist podcast episode about that, and the guy was saying they don't just give them away, they sell them at prices the locals can afford, so they take ownership. They also train people in bicycle mechanics, so some people get a career out of it too.

noglider 

Those are amazing pictures. What an abject failure.

Think back to the days when Chinese people didn't drive cars, they only rode bicycles. Those bikes must have been valued a lot. Now they are tossing them like chopsticks. The incentive system is way off.

noglider 

I know, government never does anything well. That's why I don't trust GPS. (That's sarcasm.)

fietsbob

Dockless Share bikes getting scrapped..
after being vandalized, at a pretty rapid rate , in the States.