Chinese Bike Rental Plans Collapse; Riders Just Dump Bicyles In Huge Piles

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From Shanghai to Sichuan province, bike-sharing schemes are being rolled out in an effort to slash congestion and air pollution by putting a country once known as the “Kingdom of Bicycles” back on two wheels. Companies such as Ofo and Mobike, with their rival fleets of bumblebee yellow and fluorescent orange bikes, have been locked in a cut-throat battle for customers.

But problems have arisen when clients have abandoned their cycles. “Some people these days just have really bad character,” a man named He, who lives near where the stacks appeared, told the Southern Metropolis Daily. “When they’re done using [the bike] they just throw it away somewhere, because they’ve already paid.”

In the past few days he witnessed people demolishing the bikes before discarding them on the side of the road, he said. Residents told the paper that bikes had been piling up over the past week, either parked haphazardly by careless users or stacked by local security guards trying to clear narrow residential alleys and footpaths.

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But two-wheeled travel began to go out of fashion as China became more open to the world, ushering in decades of economic growth and a high demand for cars. In 1980, almost 63% of commuters cycled to work, the Beijing Morning Post reported in 2015, citing government data. But by 2000 that number had plummeted to 38% and today it stands at less than 12%.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/17/chinese-discard-hundreds-of-cycles-for-hire-in-giant-pile