I do not think that phrase means what you think it means. Buying huge quantities of bicycles using public money without the faintest idea of whether they will be put to use is about as far from the “invisible hand” as I can imagine.
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The post reminded me of this one, posted by Pescovitz a few months ago:
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It could be that upwardly-mobile Chinese people may not want to keep riding bikes, but instead use their own cars, motorbikes, or public transportation, in order to showcase their newly-gained higher socioeconomic status.
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I often think of that, but couldn’t remember the title. Thanks.
Will they be on Alibaba or Ebay?
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Gang also cited criticism for running a promotion on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests showing bike icons depicted as tanks for contributing to the company’s downfall.
LOL - wow. I bet that got two big thumbs up from any government agency supporting them, but I bet it didn’t sit well with many of the people.
I’d like to see it, though.
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The problem seems to be mainly with “dockless” bike sharing systems, as bikes get parked pretty much anywhere, and might not get used again so are effectively abandoned. We’ve just installed a docked bikeshare system, which has its own issues, for example no docks near the main university.
The advantage of bikeshare over just riding your own bike is that you can, for example, ride to a park, walk to the market, then take the bus back without worrying about what to do with your bike. For most commuters, however, it makes more sense to just ride your own bike to work and back.
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I’m in China at the moment, and while there aren’t as many of these bikes on the street as there were 6 or 12 months ago, there are still a lot, and they are not sitting idle, lots of people ride them.
What I think has been happening is that there’s been a hyper competitive winnowing of about 10 companies down to 2 or 3 … There are still bluegogo bikes out there,free for the taking I guess
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Wow, thank you for posting!
I haven’t been back to China in over a decade. There were plenty of bikes on the roads of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing and Beijing when I was there.
I can imagine the competition is pretty fierce in the bigger cities… step off the bus, grab a bike, get to your destination, (or do this all backwards) hope like hell there’s a place to park the bluegogo, or a dock for the dockable bikes.
Back in 1997, Austin Yellow Bike Project would put out free bikes in busy commercial/municipal areas for people to use… and it was anyone’s guess whether the free bike someone rode yesterday would be around to use tomorrow.
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Well, in my city in China, we already had a government program that provided bike-rentals and quite frankly that seemed to be enough. I don’t ever recall seeing a government bike rack devoid of bikes. There was always one available and they were frequently used.
The new bikes have been popular (I presume they’re cheaper), but with at least three companies flooding the market, it’s just more bikes than anyone needs.
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Hopefully Boing Boing got permission from SerpentZA to link to his video. Watching his videos you’ll see those bikes piled everywhere on the streets of China.
Perhaps instead of making new share-bikes for use in the US, England, elswhere… China should send those surplus bikes here…so they all don’t end up in some huge waste landfill or in our oceans world-wide!!!
TQQdles™
I wouldn’t call these bikes ‘nice things’.
They’re fucken horrible heaps of shit. I won’t be mourning them one bit when they get melted down.
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Yeah its similar here in Melbourne, Australia. In our case, the majority of people simply won’t ride a bike at all, while people who will, have their own bikes which they prefer to use. Our public transport is pretty good, and walking is an option. We have O-Bikes all over the place at the moment. I have seen five or six in use over the last few months.
When in London recently I was surprised to see a lot of people using rental bikes. I think its because it is hard to take bikes on public transport, and there isn’t much light rail, so for shorter trips a bike makes sense.
Don’t worry, Those bikes will rot, but they will turn into bike compost, and in a few years a new bike field will grow with tiny clown sized bikes, a few monocycles and maybe a penny-farthing or two.
NATURE FINDS IT’S WAY!
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hello! in Shanghai and thought I could give an on-the-ground perspective. I honestly have no idea how economics works, and, given how cheap these rides are (~a couple dimes at most for 30+ minutes of riding), I have no idea how these companies are planning to make money, but it’s my understanding that they are in the “start-up” phase of things and that’s a lesser consideration.
bike shares are extremely popular. both in the number of bikes I see parked everywhere and in the people I see using them. if I had to quantify it, I would say >50% of bikes ridden now are from bike shares. the advantages are that the rider (1) is no longer responsible for maintenance, (2) no longer has to worry about bike theft, and (3) can first take the metro or a bus somewhere and then bike. Most GPS/maps apps have a function where you can say you will bike for part of the way. Obviously depends on how much you ride, but it’s hard for me to think about how using a bike share for 1-2 years multiple times a week would be more expensive than outright buying a bike.
I may be wrong, but I don’t think that the bubble has burst, and it’s hard to see urban China going to a non-bike share infrastructure, given their immense popularity. I think this article was specific to one bike share company which seemed to make a few bad decisions!
and yes, there are now electric bikes as part of the bike share, so let’s all be scared for that.
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SerpentZA has said (in his comments of the YouTube video) that he didn’t mind, it is ok, glad it is being shared.
Here is one of his videos from Jan 2017 when the Ride Share first started in China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9G1jLUeUk
Here is another video from April 2017 after the Ride Share had taken off in China. Compare this one to the latter one.
TQQdles™
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I think part of the problem is that we keep letting companies that rent you shit call it ‘sharing’. There wasn’t ‘excessive sharing’, there was an excessive supply of bikes for rent. People on AirBnB are renting you a room. Uber drivers are operating a car for hire. There’s no sharing involved.
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I’d be curious to know if the ‘share’ bikes are too unconventional/gimped to just end up devoured for parts as bicycles. That seems to happen to unattended bikes even if carefully locked up.
If they are weird in some way, they’ll still scrap just fine; but if not they might not make it as far as getting shredded and melted down.
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