This kinda blew my mind.
Seems it is abandoned ‘boris bike’ type schemes where you don’t have to take the bike back to a station after use to retain a deposit or whatever.
The result? Massive piles of abandoned bikes. Many of which will be serivaceble but the government is in deadlock with the hire companies as to picks up the bill when they are simply abandoned after use.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/08/china-abandoned-bike-share-graveyards/566576/

Wow, it’s like Koyaanisqatsi with bikes.

I’ve always thought bike-sharing schemes were a bit of a racket, or a potentially good idea implemented badly so someone can try to get rich.

Yep. Did it about a year ago.

There’s still millions of them. Everywhere. And hardly anyone uses them.

I see Edinburgh has quite a few now, but I reckon china has a far better infrastructure for cyclists than Edinburgh does

What hope is there really for mankind? Shocking waste of resources to manufacture them and create false economy.

Ofo have recently pulled out of Norwich which is a great shame but I think one of the reasons cited was the cost of rounding up the bikes and repairs.

I read that the companies profit is generated from external investment not the actual bike hire.

The good folk of Manchester proved themselves incapable of resisting the urge to steal, break, burn or throw the bikes in canals so Mobikes pulled out. A sad day for the city.

We have our own local Ofo sponsored outdoor art collection. Some of their finest installation works depicting the innate struggle for man to survice in an urban setting. This one is entitled “The sorrow of masculinity”.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/SdE5QS]Ofo premium collection[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

How/why anyone thought that dockless schemes were a viable idea is beyond me. An utterly daft concept. When you look at the way Barcelona, then Paris, and then London took on the concept and gradually evolved it (for example, the ‘basket’ on a Boris bike doesn’t work as a bin, as it does on the Paris ones) should have given anyone with half a brain the only obvious answer – these things need some sort of infrastructure. It makes me angry to see bikes, even shonky ones like these, going to waste, or effectively littering streets as in the photo above. All it does is give a negative image of bikes.

Littered all around the countryside near me, in urban areas they seem to be cleared up quickly by the authorities.

Pretty sure Ofo have gone bust in the UK now, so their bikes will slowly all find their way to the local tip. Mobike have replaced them, although so far, they are standing up a bit better (much higher quality). Ofo was the cheapest shit you could possibly buy, they all had broken lights in under a week and baskets hanging off at odd angles etc.

There are quite a few abandoned Ofo bikes littering the countryside near me now (near Cambridge).

One looks to have been flung over a hedge from a bridleway, into a field. It might be possible to retrieve it in the Summer, but at the moment you would be enveloped in thick sticky clay hours before you got there.

The good folk of Manchester humans proved themselves incapable of resisting the urge to steal, break, burn or throw the bikes in canals

Yet so predictable.

Don’t think location is important.

Docks, deposit, only way that would work.

I did see the odd Deliveroo courier on Ofo hire bikes.

It was about as gig economy as you can get, he just needed a side hustle in web development…

My colleague spotted a Mobike in Lagos, Nigeria this morning, being used to transport a jerry of petrol. I’d post the pic but I don’t know how to without a hosting site.

The good folk of Manchester proved themselves incapable of resisting the urge to steal, break, burn or throw the bikes in canals so Mobikes pulled out. A sad day for the city.

It astonishes me why people go to the trouble of investing in a city where inevitable outcome is so predictable.

Outside of the Boris Bike zones in London you see MoBike and Ofo bikes lined up cluttering the pavement, there seems to be a game of “kick the first one down, watch them all fall down” with the inevitable jumble of broken bikes and cluttered pavements.

Saw a story yesterday that Uber are developing “self driving” bikes that can home themselves back to the charge points or battery replacement points. Sound bonkers.

Saw a story yesterday that Uber are developing “self driving” bikes that can home themselves back to the charge points or battery replacement points. Sound bonkers.

Well if they can unhook themselves from railings / pull themselves out of a canal, it might just work!

The Rise and Fall of China’s Cycling Empires

Article on the whole thing here – the whole aim of it was just a marketing exercise to eventually end up with shedload of data on user habits, locations, routes etc to then send them advertising via the app.

I hated them right from the start, the whole implementation was a total shambles, the bikes were crap and it took the Manchester scallies all of about 24hrs to learn how to smash the locks. Mobike responded by pulling all the bikes in after a while, refurbing them and then re-launching under much tighter geo-fencing (meaning if you took the bike outside a very small city centre zone, your credit was dropped or you got charged more).

That more or less made the scheme worthless – it was quicker to just walk than to find one of the mystical bikes. Still see a few of them around now, almost all vandalised and being ridden for free.

almost all vandalised and being ridden for free.

On thier rear wheel whilst the rider is texting “mi-Julie” no doubt 🤣

I worked for Ofo in Sheffield from this time last year until everyone in the UK got the bullet. You should see the pictures of chaos and destruction I’ve got. It was total carnage. Trying to run the daily operations was like nailing shit to a wall but it was a right laugh. We had a small team of good people who I’m still in touch with. They paid way above what I was earning in a normal bike workshop after just moving to Sheff and luckily I managed to leapfrog into something much better.

All in all, compared to some of the nightmare jobs I’ve had, it was a thoroughly enjoyable episode even when it was clearly a house of cards in a stiff breeze.

Obviously pumping out millions of scrap bikes and leaving them to rot is criminal but that was a little bit above my station. We spent the last 3 weeks on the job hunting down as many bikes as we could find and breaking them down for scrap which was pretty depressing. Slightly better than piling them all up in a field and walking away though.

The users in Sheffield loved it. It was considered the most successful launch outside China as the whole fleet was active almost from day 1. Unfortunately the theft and vandalism was off the scale.

Don’t think location is important.

Cant find the article right now but it does seem that it was.
UK in general had a higher level of vandalism etc than other countries. With Manchester being way out in front.

What will be interesting is what happens with all the electric scooters which at least one company is trying to get legalised in the UK and are currently in use elsewhere.

How/why anyone thought that dockless schemes were a viable idea is beyond me. An utterly daft concept.

The donkey republic bikes here in Copenhagen seem to be fine without docks, and I’d say they’re far more popular than the docked ones. The Danes are a very sensible bunch though.

Ya nailed it.

The Danes are a very sensible bunch though.

I think the terminology is “respect” for both people and property.

Not sure here in the UK we are even 30% across the board on either TBH.

Unfortunately the theft and vandalism was off the scale.

You’re not kidding. I made an Instagram post about it at the time. They were like litter, I think I saw more knackered ones than ones being ridden. They were ridden out of the target area and never returned. I said at the time that I really wanted it to work but I couldn’t see any longevity in it.
Also, whoever was in charge nicked two mechanics from JE James and came in to see us trying to poach more staff. Not interested pal, get bent. The two from JEJ we’re out of work in about 3 months. Disgraceful doing things like that in my opinion.

.

The two from JEJ we’re out of work in about 3 months

Not strictly true but I’m not getting into the details of who did what and who went where. Everyone got plenty of notice, a very generous (and completely unexpected) severance pay and all had jobs lined up before we finished.

I had a nice 6 week break so I took my redundancy money, went camping in the Alps and started a new job in September. Worked out perfectly!

I’ll say this with certainty…. No one who worked at Ofo and got laid off wishes they stayed at JE James.

All these bike schemes remind me of an old saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Can anyone remember the white bicycles? There was even a song about them, a scheme in Amsterdam where bikes painted white were just left around the city for people to borrow to ride home from the pub, ride to the shops, or wherever, leave the bike fore someone else, then just borrow another one when needed.
A very laudable idea. Except it relied on people doing the right thing, and following the rules, such as they were.
Instead the majority ended up thrown in the canals, stolen, or trashed.
Sound familiar? That was fifty years ago, and still the same mistakes are being repeated.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

How/why anyone thought that dockless schemes were a viable idea is beyond me.

+1 – they just litter the streets and get in the way, company’s that run them should be fined for littering the pavements in my view – and that’s from experience of them in genteel Oxford.

I worked as a photographer for one of the Oxford papers. “Go into town and try to find some dumped in unsuitable places” they said. I caught the train in and the first one i found was INSIDE the station building. And a dozen more outside just outside the doors.
And on and on….

The French started it in La Rochelle in 1974 and then followed with Velib in Paris. Wikipedia says:

“At least 3,000 bicycles were stolen in the first year of operation, a number far greater than had been initially anticipated.[4] By August 2009, of 20,600 bikes introduced into service, about 16,000 – some 80% of the total – had been replaced due to vandalism or theft; of the latter, fully 8,000 were stolen.[20][21] Stolen Vélib’ bicycles turned up in shipping containers destined for North Africa, and in cities as far away as Brașov and Bucharest, Romania.[17][22] Vandalized cycles were sometimes thrown in the River Seine, or hung from lampposts.[17] In 2009, the New York Times reported that it was common to see Vélib’ bicycles in their docking stations with flat tires, broken pedals, or other damage.[17] In 2012, however, the Financial Times reported that “attrition rates have fallen significantly” since the first two years of the program. While maintenance continues to be an issue, the FT attributed this to “the difficulty of keeping up with the results of heavy use” of the “popular service”, in addition to willful damage or theft.[23]”

Looks like the council has had a clean up, several of the Ofo wrecks have vanished in the last few days from Cambridge City Centre, used to pass loads on the way to work / gym etc…

It astonishes me why people go to the trouble of investing in a city where inevitable outcome is so predictable.

Whereas I’m now becoming accustomed to your repeated inability to comprehend life outside your privileged bubble.

Story of cities #30: how this Amsterdam inventor gave bike-sharing to the world

How/why anyone thought that dockless schemes were a viable idea is beyond me. An utterly daft concept.

So long as they actually put docking stations where they are needed.
I live in one of the Suburbs of Reading which has a docked bike hire scheme but it only seems to operate between the J11 P&R, the area round the university, Christchurch meadow (the Park by the river in Caversham) and the town centre, essentially a straight N/S line. But those uf us living in the burbs to the East and West of the town have no local docking stations…. Dockless might actually make sense in these situations where the infrastucture is lacking.

My understanding of the situation in China was that essentially anyone can set up a bike hire scheme (and so they have), it’s an uncontrolled, unregulated area of business. so a free for all and nobody is held accountable when their dumped rental bikes become a problem.

Just closed my Mobiky account after spending a whole £10. Took a bike on Friday, rode my usual journey which I’ve done 3-4 times, and the only route I’ve ever used the bikes for. Parked up, boarded a train and price doubled to £2. Text arrives to say I’ve parked “out of zone and can I return it to avoid a £20 fine within 30 minutes”. Well obviously not, I’m on a train. To their credit, they repealed the fine. But… the zones are now so small as to be of no use. The system will die for that. Half a mile is not a long ride.

Never managed to find an Ofo to rent when I wanted one.

And yes, levels of vandalism in the Uk were shocking. Some councils removed the bikes using fly tipping legislation.

Whereas I’m now becoming accustomed to your repeated inability to comprehend life outside your privileged bubble.

You have a valid point.