
Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet - ArmandGrillet
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/25/gobeebike-france-mass-destruction-dockless-bikes
======
jmnicolas
I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent.

We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k
inhabitants.

The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown
from the 14th floor etc etc

We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes.

Tax payer money well spent?

~~~
rdtsc
> stolen and found in Africa

That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an
interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from
a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to
ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to
impress their peers.

~~~
Torwald
If that was unexpected to you, I'll take it you don't know France very well.

People send stuff back to Africa all the time. I can't say anything about the
bike (obviously), but I can tell you what an African friend of mine does for a
living; in the middle of Europe.

He sends stuff back to Africa. What he does is he rents out a container on a
ship and then collects the payload in small units. I advertises in the African
community (mainly Togo) and sells small amount of space on that container.
People want to send stuff to their relatives on the continent all the time.

I hope my mildly related anecdote was helpful.

~~~
nitrogen
In inland southern California there is (or was, last time I was there) a
Polynesian community that's established enough for similar container-shipping
companies to arise to send things to their families still on the islands.

------
londons_explore
I have met a few people who have a very personal vendetta against these bike
rental companies.

They see them as cluttering the streets and operating without the proper
licencing and permissions.

To rectify the issue, they will happily throw 50 bikes into the river each
time they pass a parking area.

They see it as doing the government/the people a favour. The guy I spoke to
who did this didn't have a smartphone, so I would guess hadn't even used the
scheme.

~~~
TomMarius
Eh. The government sure seems like a sect. I don't mean by itself, but some
people treat it like one, and are becoming a part of the sect they've made up
in their heads.

Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote.

~~~
teh_klev
> Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

 _" Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good,
and it makes boring reading."_

~~~
TomMarius
I didn't get any new downvotes after the edit, but I don't really care about
the downvotes, it's the lack of explanation that bugs me. I never edited
comments like this until one month ago because there was no need, but that
changed since around half a year ago when I noticed that instead of
participating in a discussion, people just downvote. I don't think that the
purpose of downvotes should be to disagree without saying anything, that
creates a very toxic environment, so I'm trying to encourage people to
discuss.

Also, I didn't _comment_ about voting. I replied to a comment and then added a
line about the downvotes later (after I got downvoted without any explanation)
because I don't feel good in this kind of environment.

Edit: apparently now I'm "posting too fast" (2 comments per hour is fast?
OK...), so there's my reply to the child comment that says it seems trollish:
"Yeah I agree - if there wasn't the explanatory sentence after that. You can't
just downvote the whole comment based on its first sentence, it has a
completely different meaning without the rest."

~~~
Freak_NL
A phrasing such as "the government sure feels like a sect" comes across as
trollish. Without any substantiation such an outlandish claim seems designed
exclusively to provoke people, rather than engage them in meaningful
discussion.

Edit: as a consequence, people tend to downvote instead of engage with your
comment, because they don't want to feed the trolls.

------
smallnamespace
This is not a huge surprise—China has very low rates of street crime, which is
why the 'leave a bike anywhere' model isn't destroyed by vandalism.

Increasingly, as Chinese companies try to expand abroad (valuations are so
inflated in China that diversifying geographically is very tempting, much like
80s Japan), they are going to stumble a bit due to less familiarity with other
societies, e.g. [1].

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/economy/ohio-
fac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/economy/ohio-factory-jobs-
china.html)

~~~
CodeWriter23
It’s near the end of this article, Chinese bikeshare companies are having
similar vandalism experiences in China:

[https://qz.com/919739/chinese-bike-sharing-startups-like-
ofo...](https://qz.com/919739/chinese-bike-sharing-startups-like-ofo-and-
mobike-are-being-taken-for-a-ride-by-thieves-vandals-and-cheapskates/)

------
Tharkun
There's only so much space in cities. Getting rid of bikes is the wrong move.
Cars take up so much more space and cause a plethora of negative effects.

Interesting to see that this approach of vandalism is working. It's a shame
people aren't physically strong enough to throw cars into rivers and from
rooftops. Perhaps then Paris could be rid of its car problem.

~~~
davidzweig
Yes, that's a nice idea. No cars in the city. Pedestrianise half the streets.
Plant some trees. Double the number of busses (electric? China has lots).
Allow delivery vehicles between certain hours. I think it'd be great.. much
less traffic noise, easier to cycle, more public spaces. Maybe it'd be like
the photos of Eastern Europe in the 70s/80s, with wide empty streets. I enjoy
my car, but not in the city, and when most people in a city drive, it must be
a net loss.

~~~
KozmoNau7
That would be amazing. I'm hoping Copenhagen gets there in my lifetime.

------
Ecco
For some reason nobody talks about the extreme nuisance of those bikes.
Customers would just drop them literally _anywhere_ : on the sidewalk blocking
pedestrians, right in the middle of the street blocking cars, in front of
building doors preventing people from entering, etc... Such a terrible
nuisance, and something to be expected since there is such little room in the
Parisian streets (you can’t seriously expect customers to drop their bike in a
proper location if there are so few of them).

Long story short, I’m glad to see them go, even though I would have preferred
them to be banned rather than vandalized.

~~~
madflo
I am living in Lille, France, where Gobee.bike begun its French expansion. I
am commuting by bike and as a cyclist I do agree with the comment above.

Dockless bikes quickly became a nuisance, a few days after gobee.bike released
their fleet. People left those bikes everywhere, including on pedestrian space
and bicycle lanes.

On a personal note : there is a well maintained and dock-based bike sharing
system provided by the town council in Lille. If bike sharing, as some point,
become a part of the town's infrastructure — see: Paris with Velib, Lyon and
Lille — I do not see the need nor the space for concurrent offerings from
different bike networks.

~~~
docdeek
I live in Lyon and I use (and love) the Velov system of docked bikes here. I
was interested when the Gobee bikes arrived not too long ago and spotted a few
around the city, but the convenience and numerical advantage of the Velov
bikes meant I didn’t give them a try.

Velov works really well but there is a trade off. The local government gives
away the rights to all the external advertising in the city to the company
behind the Velov bikes. The company provides the bikes and, in turn, gets to
on sell the advertising space on bus shelters, outdoor signs, pretty much
everywhere in the city it seems. A little bit of competition would not be a
bad thing, I think, though it would be hard for any competitor to overcome the
advantages that a big advertising company like JCD has in terms of their
revenues from the signage.

------
steinerj
I'm surprised... Cologne, Germany has dockless bike rental for more than a
decade, but none of the operators complain about excessive vandalism.
Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France.

The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a
tank'.

There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their
customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable. Maybe
they gathered enough and are on their way out?

~~~
ArmandGrillet
> Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France.

I'm French and living in Germany, I laughed while reading this. The countries
are close to each others but the culture is different, especially concerning
vandalism/individualism. I have many examples like the cleanliness of public
spaces to the state of public bikes (comparing Velib' v. StadtRAD, the German
version works way better), the general feeling being that French people
undervalue the impact of one's acts on a global community, leading to the
situation described in the article.

Ask a German why do they pay more for health instances than in France and they
will answer "Our debt is going down, our kids will not pay more than us and
the system should work in the long term.", I had never heard that thought
before moving outside of France.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Germany seems to operate under the Greek proverb, “A society grows great when
old men plant trees whose shade they shall never sit in.” I’m quite envious of
them as a culture (being American).

------
misja111
A similar thing is happening in Switzerland:
[http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Schweizer-sehen-O-
Bik...](http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/Schweizer-sehen-O-Bike-als--
chinesische-Invasion--20959843) (in German).

Apparently some people see the rental bikes from this company, O-bike, as an
unwanted Chinese intrusion into their country.

------
J-dawg
Do “dockless” bike hire systems actually work anywhere? There seem to have
been so many stories like this.

Docked systems seem to work really well (e.g. London), presumably because you
can’t take a bike without leaving your credit card details.

~~~
cuonic
I used the Gobee.bike rental service in both Turin and Milan, and the only
vandalism I encountered were two bikes that had been thrown into the Navigli
canal, other than that it didn't appear to be much of a problem in Italy. For
the French market maybe they need to look into attaching the device to a
physical object (lamp post, docking station), other than just locking the rear
wheel, to keep the oppurtunists at bay.

~~~
boudin
In this article (in french), they say that Gobee face the same issue in Italy
(60% of destroyed or stolen bikes) and they're gonna stop their activity there
too. They also say that Globee already had to stop their activity in Brussels
for the same reasons.
[http://mobile.lemonde.fr/entreprises/article/2018/02/25/les-...](http://mobile.lemonde.fr/entreprises/article/2018/02/25/les-
velos-en-libre-service-gobee-bike-contraint-d-arreter-en-
france_5262235_1656994.html)

~~~
cuonic
Wow that's dissapointing, such a shame. The most surprising example is in
Reims, France where they provided 400 bikes in November 2017, only 20 fully
functional bikes remained in January this year. The rest were either
vandalised, broken or stolen.

~~~
boudin
Indeed... After, it's hard to make any deduction. Public bikes are
widespreaded in France, have been there for a long time, and seems to work
quite well (most of those are dockable though). It seems to me that this
company got something very wrong in their business model if they face this
issue in a lot of places.

------
wiradikusuma
There's another bike company here in (SE)Asia, OBike. They're pretty big, and
aggressively fundraising. I told my wife, "I can understand that people want
to Uber-ify everything, but this is very different than Uber concept, so I
think it won't work in the long term."

The main difference is.. who's looking after the vehicle.

With Uber, the vehicle is typically owned by the driver, so the driver has
interest in making sure the customers (riders) don't vandalize it. Not only
that, it's in the driver's best interest to keep the vehicle maintained.

With these bike sharing companies, nobody except the company owns the bike.
And since nobody is watching over the customers, they don't feel the need to
behave.

You can say, "Just force them to put deposit, and if the bike is damaged,
deduct their deposit." Well, how do you know if the bike is damaged by them,
and not random bypassers?

~~~
k_lander
_You can say, "Just force them to put deposit, and if the bike is damaged,
deduct their deposit." Well, how do you know if the bike is damaged by them,
and not random bypassers?_

You don't but the point of the deposit is simply to act as a deterrent. When
your deposit is on the line, you have an incentive to look after the bike
while it is in your possession. You wouldn't purposely seek to damage it if it
is going to cost you. It takes the "fun" out of vandalising and that is
usually sufficient.

~~~
pfarnsworth
The people who take joy in vandalizing things will have no fear in a deposit
especially since it’s impossible to prove if they vandalized anything.

------
Torai
Same story again. Engineers designing things or companies without considering
the human factor, just cause they lack that knowledge.

------
Theodores
I wonder who these bikes are supposed to appeal to. If you are a cyclist then
you have your own bicycle, or you have a choice of bicycles. You don't leave
the door with your bike left behind so you can take the heavier, possibly
vandalised, possibly unavailable public transport bike in order to get to your
destination later.

Sometimes when catching the train I cannot take a bicycle. In theory I could
hire a bike at the far end and just leave my bike at the start station.
However, this I never think to do. I might think of getting a bus or even a
taxi but I would never think to get a hire bike. Even though there is a rack
of them outside the station.

Out of my non-cycling friends, the people that drive to work or just walk,
these people have not taken their bicycles out of the shed for many, many
years. They are no likely to re-orient their entire commuting experience
around some hire bikes as they decided a long time ago that being on the
streets with no crumple zones was not for them.

I do know people that do get about on Boris bikes once in a while, as a fun
way to get around London with friends on a weekend, but not as part of a
serious commute.

There are better ways to get bikes on the road, the bike to work tax free
scheme being one of them. This has got a lot of people cycling in the UK. It
is also about time that normal bicycles are a bit more legally sensible. With
cars we no longer allow 1970's standards (e,g, no seat belts). I am not saying
we add airbags to bicycles but we could update the law so bicycles have to
have lights the minute they get put in the showroom, mandatory and part of the
bike. LED lighting makes that doable.

Similarly, tyres could be made to be 'road legal' with some puncture
protection made mandatory. There could also be a small tax benefit for
bicycles designed for utility purpose, taxed differently to the sport bikes
that have no mudguards.

With a lower tax on 'utility' bikes a subtle shaping of bikes sold could
result in safer roads with more people riding year round, mostly for commuting
reasons. People would be able to pay the extra for their carbon fibre road
bikes that don't have the lights, mudguards and sensible lock, that would be
standard VAT, not the bargain 'utility' rate.

A defined 'utility' bike that is personally owned could be insured very
differently to a 'sports' bicycle, perhaps more affordably, with reasonable
third party cover. Meanwhile 'fixies' such as that one that was involved in a
tragic accident killing a pedestrian, those bikes would not be as cheap to
ride or likely to be so prevalent on the roads.

~~~
devit
The main advantage is that you can combine them with public transportation:
you take a dockless bike to an underground/bus station, then once you get off
you take another dockless bike to the destination, which effectively gives you
very cheap and very fast transportation from anywhere to anywhere.

The other advantages are not having to worry about theft, being able to get a
bike wherever you are even if you didn't anticipate it, and being able to get
somewhere by bike and go back in a car with someone else or vice versa.

