Beijing Review – August 15, 2019

46 BEIJING REVIEW AUGUST 15, 2019 http://www.bjreview.com

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How Should Cities Improve

Dockless Bike-Sharing Services?

R

ecently, transport authorities in
Guangzhou in south China’s Guangdong
Province released information that it had
conducted talks with bike-sharing companies
with business in the city, demanding that they
suspend the deployment of new bicycles until
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practices.
In April, in order to keep the bike-sharing
service in order, the city’s transport bureau is-
sued a tender where companies like Mobike
and Hellobike won certain quotas. However,
it has now been found that these firms are
not making efforts to improve their operation
modes, which has led to pileups of bicycles that
damage the image of the city and disrupt public
transport.
Many people have voiced their opinions on
how to rein in the reckless sprawling of shared
bikes in urban areas so that the service can bet-
ter satisfy users’ needs while at the same time
integrate into city transport.

Integration ahead of quantity

Zi Chang (Nanfang Daily): Shared bicycles

can often be seen scattered everywhere on

city streets, diminishing their positive function

and causing many cities to prohibit the entry of

bike-sharing companies. This should be partly

blamed on relevant watchdogs for their un-

derestimation of these bikes’ negative impact

on urban order and also their slow response to

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especially at the start of development, are so

eager to win clients that they almost totally ne-

glect the management of their bicycles.

In the early days, it was understandable that

bike-sharing companies were not experienced

enough to cope with the business, thus they

recklessly deployed huge numbers of bikes

onto the streets.

So why is the scene still so messy? The

answer is that either these firms are not re-

ally paying attention to this problem or they

have yet to find an effective solution. Indeed,

to acquire a large number of users and high

frequency use is crucial for these companies’

survival, but in the long run, the key to the

industry’s development is effective bike man-

agement so that they will become a natural part

of a city’s public transport.

At the beginning of its development, the

bike-sharing service was acclaimed as an in-

novative, low carbon transport and Internet

Plus application. However, its edge should not

be limited to the concept level, but should also

extend to real-time operation. It’s supposed to

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vice supply. Therefore, an innovative concept is

not enough; there must also be technological

and management innovation to match it.

Years have passed since this business

emerged, but old problems still linger. The focus

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to integration with cities’ public management.

Healthier model needed

Liu Zhiqiang (People’s Daily): Some cities

have taken actions to standardize dockless

bike-sharing services in their cities in a bid to

ban random docking and vandalism. At the

same time, groaning under pressure, some

bike-sharing companies are secretly raising their

prices instead of continuing to offer subsidies

for the use of their bikes.

As far as the whole bike-sharing sector is

concerned, this declining mania is good news.

Since its birth, the bike-sharing service—with

high investor expectations—has never devel-

oped an efficient operation model. Its boom

was often based on discounts, subsidies and

even company losses. Price hikes will help to

bring the price to a reasonable level and better

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of resources that would otherwise be wasted.

The practice will help with the long-term devel-

opment of the business.

When it comes to society, the shrinking of

dockless bike-sharing services is also a boon.

The past three years have seen shared bikes

clogging streets and invading urban space. It is a

huge waste of resources. According to statistics

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than 1.9 million shared bikes in the city, more

than half were not used for over a month.

The waning tide of shared bike services in

cities does not necessarily mean a failure of this

innovation. Rather, it reflects the maturing of

this sector.

Actually, before the current problems, some

cities had tried to adopt measures to curb the

bike sprawl. However, at the time, public opinion

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the innovation should not be killed in the cradle.

Now we have realized that those proposed

measures were farsighted.

In this sense, stringent regulation is some-

times effective protection for startups, rather

than suppression. As we can see, to let the bike-

sharing startups do whatever they want is the

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GLIĶFXOWLHV

Of course, tough regulation is not equal to

arbitrary management that may throttle innova-

tion. We need targeted and effective measures.

On the one hand, there should be enough tol-

erance for startups based on careful regulating.

On the other hand, there must be a bottom line

and startups should not be allowed to expand

recklessly.

Given various forms of the sharing econo-

my today, regulations should target two things:

order and potential risk.

The deployment of shared bikes will inevita-

bly invade public land and space. All cities have