
Bike Share Oversupply in China - gmays
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/?single_page=true
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volkert
I find the outrage about these piles of bikes quite amusing given we park our
cars that are not used 99% of the time right in the spaces where we live

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nielsbjerg
Even if we don't drive our cars all the time, we don't throw them into a pile
and break them. We take care of our cars, keeping them for years, and when
they are no longer used, they are recycled.

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repomies6999
People take care of their cars only to a level where it makes economic sense.
Same applies for bikes. There's plenty of badly treated cars everywhere.

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danso
How many usable cars are abandoned by their owners to be dumped into random
car graveyards?

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walshemj
Depends on how strict your countries DVLA is. If you dump a car the last
registered owner is going to get charged and fined for fly tipping - in the UK

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osdiab
I loved riding these bikes in China when I lived there because they were so
convenient and you could find a free one pretty much anywhere. I hope the
concept spreads, but with a reputation like this, convincing cities to allow
for it will be tough.

They took the "ask for forgiveness later" strategy in China leading to this
mess, but even with a few bikes showing up in cities around the globe, until
they're really ubiquitous it isn't a game changer. The minor presence we see
in cities like SF and Seattle is not nearly enough to feel the positive
impacts of ubiquitous dockless bikeshares.

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erickhill
There are three separate companies that have provided bikes for this kind of
business model in Seattle: Lime Bike, OFO and mobike. I ride my own bike
approximately 55 miles per week, and these are my anecdotal observation:

-) A decent percentage of customers in some areas seem to be tourists. But a lot of locals use them, too. -) There is no rhyme or reason to where customers "dump" their bikes when they are finished using them. Sometimes these can literally litter sidewalks. -) when not in use, there are times when I ride through the city and see them all over the place to the point where they look like a spooky apocalyptic movie set. All of the people just left their bikes everywhere, but are gone. -) Someone who works for me lives in an area in Seattle called Capitol Hill, which has very steep hills. He needed a Lime Bike to get him to downtown quickly (almost entirely down hill, sometimes steep). It was just in the nick of time halfway down the first hill when he realized someone had snipped the brake lines. He was not injured but nearly flew into traffic. -) The tires are solid rubber: no inner tubes. Seems a brilliant idea that could spread to all bikes eventually.

It's a cool concept, but there is some sort of magic number (that doesn't seem
spreadsheet-driven) on how many bikes is too many. There is supposed to be a
city review at some point, which was scheduled at the beginning of these
contracts, to see if thousands more bikes could be added to the city’s
streets.

I feel pretty confidently that it will be rejected.

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fossuser
Tubeless tires are actually an old idea (they predate the pneumatic tires).
The reason they're not widespread is the ride can be extremely rough and not
as efficient.

The other downside is that the additional shock gets delivered to the wheels
themselves so while you don't have to replace your tubes or pump your tires
up, you may have to fix your wheels more frequently.

I learned this because I thought they were pretty cool and wanted to get a low
maintenance belt drive bicycle with tubeless tires, but ended up with a belt
drive bicycle with pneumatic tires (Priority Continuum)

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bri3d
For those searching, this is not the conventional use of "tubeless" when it
comes to tires - this term refers to pneumatic tires which do not use an inner
tube. "Solid tire" or "solid tube" are the more common terms for airless tires
and tire inserts. On off-road motorcycles they're called bib mousse, a
Michelin trade term for an airless foam inner tube.

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kylehotchkiss
Why doesn't the government just sell these bikes to Africa? They'll maybe(?)
gain a bit more value than just smelting down the bikes, it would help China's
Africa ambitions, and it could make a positive difference in Africa by helping
people become slightly more mobile.

And it also takes a few bikes off Chinese sidewalks and out of the trees.

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macspoofing
What's with this attitude that the solution to issues in Africa is to dump
some product on the continent? What are you solving by dumping a massive
amount of unwanted, broken down bicycles? And where in Africa? Africa is a
huge place.

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cooper12
I remember reading somewhere that so many people donated t-shirts to Africa
that it devastated their local textiles industry. You can't just throw money
(or garbage in this case) and expect it to magically fix underlying issues
such as with infrastructure. Also, Africa isn't across the street: there are
signifiant logistical issues involved.

Edit: found an article: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/second-
hand-cl...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/second-hand-
clothing-donations-kenya)

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NullPrefix
>You can't just throw money

That's exactly what you should be doing if you want to solve it. By throwing
money (cash) directly to the poor you can drive up the local economy.

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stephengillie
Direct charity creates dependence. The way to solve poverty in Africa is to
buy goods from people in Africa. But too many people continue to see the
entire continent as incapable of providing value.

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girzel
My understanding is that bike-share companies in China (unlike how they
operate in the US) require a deposit when you sign up for an account.
Everybody dumped 100 RMB or what have you into their accounts at the outset

Meaning that starting a company like this is essentially a scheme for scamming
a massive infusion of liquidity: you raise funds, collect deposits, and then
you either decamp for the Bahamas, or you invest your cash in the stock market
and let the bikes rot.

We were surprised, upon moving back to the US, that the bike-share companies
here don't charge a deposit.

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chillacy
When I was in Shanghai less than a year ago ofo was giving away so many free
rides that I never paid or deposited a single RMB during my entire trip. My
co-workers who work there said that they don't really pay for ofo either for
light usage, they keep getting weekly coupons. So it seems now they've
transitioned to burning VC money at least.

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gowld
The US is starting to build its own piles of abandoned and broken bicycles,
now that bike-shares have reached the US. Interestingly, most of the bike
share companies are backed by Chinese companies that have the relevant
experience.

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dx034
Mobike apparently has a factory that can produce 50,000 bikes per day. They
can easily flood a US/EU city with bikes just with a day's production.
Transporting a container full of bikes via ship is cheap so I don't think they
produce anything locally.

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NegativeLatency
Imagine what you could build out of those bikes with a grinder and a welder.

I wish there was some way I could buy say 10 of these (in the US (and not have
it cost too much)) to build something out of.

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alvern
You can buy shipping containers of these from Japan and China.

If you want 10 inside the US, just pick them up off the playa after Burning
Man ;D

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Scoundreller
What happens to them? Do they get set aside in a pile for next year?
Disposed/recycled?

I figure a rusty bike from the north will be nicely sandblasted after a
year...

The rubber would get ruined though...

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unclebucknasty
Also makes you wonder whether [fill-in-the-blank]-sharing is really a good
idea in a world that thrives on planned obsolescence.

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logfromblammo
Those pictures made me think that those were just inviting some organism to
move into a new niche based upon bicycle predation or bicycle parasitism.

And sure enough, if you look closely enough, you can see the bike mold
creeping up to cover the old, weak, and sickly bicycles that can no longer
keep up with the herd.

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alex_young
Why do we need bike shares at all? Shouldn't there just be enough bikes lying
around that everyone could just ride whenever they wanted?

There are around 18MM new bikes sold a year in the US [1]. About 100MM people
bike each year in the US [2].

Do bikes really wear out every 5 years? Mine is 22 years old and still in
great condition.

We should have piles of the things at every street corner. There must be
landfills full of bikes.

[1] [https://nbda.com/articles/industry-
overview-2012-pg34.htm](https://nbda.com/articles/industry-
overview-2012-pg34.htm) [2]
[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/04/survey-100-million-
am...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/04/survey-100-million-americans-
bike-each-year-but-few-make-it-a-habit/)

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i_feel_great
No we don't. We need better bikepaths, separate from cars, covered from the
elements, multi-lane, safe and secure, extensive routes.

I have promoted the idea of building a network of bikepaths over the train
lines here in Brisbane. Goes everywhere the train does, with entry and exits
at trains stations.

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girvo
Oh man that’d be fantastic. Though I don’t know how it’d work through Central.
I used to ride from the Valley to Red Hill for work every day, and even that
felt too sketchy, which is sad :( I love Brisbane, but there’s a lot of room
for improvement.

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i_feel_great
I'm sure engineers can figure that out, but I am thinking as soon as you'd hit
Roma Street from either direction the path should go along the North and South
Banks of the river.

Raised platforms in the city, say over Adelaide Street and Elizabeth Street
along one way, and over Edward Street and George Street the other way, would
be amazing. Just imagine.

I live in Nundah and work in Edward Street. Biking down Sandgate Road, Nudgee
Road or Gympie Road in peak hour is suicidal. Back roads are not much better.

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nielsbjerg
What an absolute waste of resources. We should get these bikes to people with
real need - imagine what this would mean for a family who need to walk for
hours for water or education.

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vkou
What makes you think these bicycles will be scrapped? I imagine most of them
will be sold at auction.

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nielsbjerg
The image where a person is walking on a stack of them getting some rope. The
image where a person bikes by a tall stack of bikes. For a lot of the properly
parked ones, I assume you are right.

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vkou
He's not just getting some rope - he's untangling the rope that bundled these
bicycles, when they were lowered into place. The rope was attached to a crane.
You can see that crane in the picture - he's actively working on the storage
site.

Yes, I imagine that may damage some of the bicycles. It's still much cheaper
then alternative means of storage. It's just the cost of dealing with
industrial quantities of goods - your local big box stores lose or damage some
of their merchandise all the time, for similar reasons.

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watmough
I think that's actually literal fire-hose, rather than rope. It's pretty handy
for delimiting R/C car tracks!

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ec109685
With all those bikes piled up, why are there photos of folks fixing bikes?

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throwaway080383
I'm reminded of Paperclip Maximizer.

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bassman9000
Why not donating them to developing countries?

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dx034
Because donating regularly destroys local industries. Donations of food and
clothes to Africa have contributed to the destruction of local companies,
leaving the countries dependent on foreign aid.

You could sell broken ones for a low price to companies in developing
countries so that they can repair them for sale.

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vkou
This is a misleading story. The photographs of the bike piles are not
abandoned bicycles - they are storage stockpiles from a bankrupt company
awaiting liquidation.

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osdiab
That's not true, there were tons of Mobike and Ofo bikes there, both of which
are very well funded and active corporations at the moment. There are some
minor incorrect statements—Didi isn't just a bike-sharing company, but they're
the Chinese equivalent of Uber, the largest ridesharing company in the world,
and 2nd largest e-commerce company in China—but what the article does lack is
context on how things got to this point.

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Camillo
This shows the problem with capitalism's winner-takes-all ethic. In America
the piles of old bikes are not built by corporations, but by mom-and-pop chop-
shops and self-employed bike thieves, under the benevolent watch of the local
police. Clearly that is a far more sustainable approach to bike sharing, and
the role of local (organic?) bike thieves and fences helps keep the benefits
in the community, instead of sucking up all the profits to monocle-wearing
capitalists in far-off cities.

(Note: this was sarcasm.)

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egypturnash
I hate to tell you this, but there are like four of these companies in Seattle
now, there was a story about companies doing this same model in San Francisco
except with electric scooters that people are bitching about clogging up the
sidewalks; Seattle has been working with the bikeshare companies so maybe they
won't end up with massive junkyards of bikes after the bikeshare #12 learns
the hard way that there is only room for three bikeshare companies in one
city, but I know the SF scooter companies are completely unlicensed.

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vorg
> the bikeshare #12 learns the hard way that there is only room for three
> bikeshare companies in one city

Their business model isn't about getting people to use the shared bikes for a
small fee. It's about getting people to pay the initial deposit for the right
to easily use the bikes. There's room for more than 3 bikeshare companies
doing this. By creating an oversupply from funds invested in their capital
account, the company can create the illusion of having many bikes available.
As soon as someone experiences even a minor problem with finding a bike from
their current bikeshare company, they may sign up with and pay the deposit to
another company. Although a company in theory puts the deposit into a special
account and returns it to the customer on demand, in practise they don't if
they go bankrupt and the deposits have already been skimmed.

I experienced this trying to sign up with Mobike as a foreigner in China.
After taking a 299 rmb deposit from my bank account, their app presented a
screen accepting Chinese citizen ID numbers only. I couldn't find a menu
option anywhere for retrieving my deposit money. What is the deposit amount
for those bikeshare companies in Seattle?

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osdiab
Really? I was using Mobike as a foreigner in China for a while and I don't
recall them asking for a 身份证 or anything (did they ask for my passport number?
I don't think they did), plus they have a pretty well-translated app and
already operate in other English speaking markets including the USA and
Singapore. For Mobike and Ofo they should be flush with enough money that the
likelihood of them shutting down all of a sudden is relatively unlikely, but
just in case when I left China I did get my deposit refunded fine.

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vorg
> they have a pretty well-translated app

I tried signing up one week ago. Perhaps they've changed since you were there.
I used their service in WeChat linked to WeChatPay to sign up and pay the
deposit, after which I hit the "enter your ID card number" snag. I also tried
downloading the app on their website but it doesn't run on my phone (running
Android 4.4.4) which I bought in China.

 _Edit:_ I still maintain an integral part of the business model of smaller
bikesharing companies is collecting the deposits and using the money for other
things.

