Riders in Hangzhou, China abandon and leave thousands of bicycles all over the city. And nobody knows what to do with them.
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From Wired Magazine...
RESIDENTS OF HANGZHOU, China, can hop onto any one of at least 86,000 bicycles and ride wherever they like. The bikes are easy to find, too, because people tend to leave them in any old place. On sidewalks. Under overpasses. In parks. Leaning against walls and lying in vacant lots.
Police have rounded up 23,000 bikes so far this year and hauled them to 16 corrals around the city. From the ground, these bicycle graveyards look like junkyards. Seen from above, they take on an impressionistic quality.
Hangzhou launched the $24 million bike-share program in 2008 to mitigate the vehicle exhaust choking the city. It was the first project of its kind in China, and its size is second only to the program in Wuhan. It recently won a fancy sustainable transport award, and GST claims the bikes eliminate more than 110,000 tons of gas consumption a year.
But no one anticipated so many lazy cyclists. Private companies started offering bikes riders didn't have to return to one of the government's 3,000 docking stations. People could simply drop the bikes wherever they liked. And so they did, leaving them almost anywhere. China News Service reports that in March this year (2017), complaints from concerned citizens grew so numerous that the city began rounding them up.
What happens next is anyone's guess. Until someone figures that out, the bikes will just keep piling up.
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13 comments:
We had free bikes for 'hire' here in Adelaide until the local councils and regular people got fed up with them being left just anywhere. Now we have free scooters instead with the same "left just anywhere" problem, plus they ride them on the footpaths not the roads, so pedestrians are constantly having to get out of the way and the scooters are silent so if the scoot up behind you, many elderly people get a shock and stumble as they try to get out of the way. The theory behind these is good, less pollution from cars and buses, but the reality just isn't working out.
River - One problem substituted for another. Sideways progress.
There's a similar problem in Germany, according to a report on the German program "Galileo."Do you get credit for the exercise of riding a bike if you're too lazy to return it to the place you started? Discuss.
Bikes are a great thing....until they're not.
It's like those damn scooters here in the cities. People leave them everywhere.
Bill - I guess what I don't understand is why pick up the bikes and put them in a storage lot? Put them back someplace where they can be used again. What am I missing?
Kathy - I've seen the scooters around the area but not bikes.
Deb - Someone could make money re"cycling" them. Sounds like they would be easier to steal than catalytic converters.
Laziness and inconsideration are human traits in every culture.
It becomes messy when you have 1.4 billion people in a country.
Your reply to Bill was just what I was thinking - why put the bikes where they can't be used again. The complaints from citizens would continue, I suppose, if they put the bikes back in use again. I can see how it wouldn't necessarily be convenient to use a bike if it had to go to a specific station, and then people wouldn't use them at all. The answer is obvious, I guess; install wheels in everyone's feet.
Shaw - You would think with 1.4 billion people it would be easy to keep 23,000 bikes in circulation.
Jenny - Roller skates for everyone!
Unintended Consequences again!
Cloudia - Who knew?!
Wow that is lazy. I always return my shopping cart to shopping cart corral.
Lady - There has to be more to this story.
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