Photo credit: Mobike.
After almost a year of unfettered growth, China’s bike-sharing craze will finally start seeing concrete regulations.
On Friday, the Shanghai Bicycle Association announced plans to enact citywide bike-sharing regulations as early as June, reported local Chinese media. Drafted regulations could include requiring companies to return deposits and other expenses within seven days, maintain a 24-hour customer complaint hotline, and remove their bikes after three years of use. Bikes would also have to be tested every year to ensure their safety.
“Many Shanghai [organizations] also recommend creating ‘e-parking lots’ to prevent overflowing bikes from disturbing nearby residents,” Xu Daoxing, chief engineer of the Shanghai Bicycle Association, told local media.
‘E-parking lots’ would automatically prevent bikes from locking – that’s how users return them – in non-designated biking areas, a concept that some district government are already contemplating.
Bike-sharing overload. Photo credit: Mikey Chee.
The country’s latest transportation craze kicked off last year when Mobike and Ofo rolled out their own fleet of bikes – bright orange and yellow, respectively – around college campuses and cities in China. Since then, the two arch-rivals have raised almost a billion dollars in investment collectively. A multitude of other bike-sharing startups, such as Bluegogo and Xiaoming Danche, have also popped up.
The bike-sharing model is starting to clash with city management.
However, the bike-sharing model is starting to clash with city management. Unlike traditional bike-sharing systems, where users have to return rental bikes to a fixed station, Chinese bike-sharing startups let users drop off and rent bikes wherever they want, using an app to help them locate nearby available bikes. While convenient, this means that rental bikes can end up in the street and clog pedestrian walkways – especially as startups vie for market share.
Earlier this month, Shanghai officials seized and impounded thousands of bikes from different startups.
“Competition in the bike-sharing market is fierce. We understand that different companies are trying everything to occupy the market,” said city officials in a statement. “But parking, maintenance, and management must also follow […] instead of throwing the cost of management into the hands of society.”
The Shanghai government claims it is the largest bike-sharing city in the world, with roughly 4.5 million bike-sharing users. The Shanghai Bicycle Association estimates that, by the first half of the year, the city’s bike-sharing market will have more than 500,000 shared bikes. These new regulations could raise the bar for bike-sharing hopefuls, and rein in the quickly saturating industry before bikes take over the streets of Shanghai.
Tech in Asia has reached out to Mobike and Ofo for comments and has not heard back yet.
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