Mountain of Bikes Left at Dallas Recycling Center After Ofo Leaves City
jalopnik.comIt's interesting to see the timeline in serpentza's youtube videos about bike sharing in China Starts out well in January https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9G1jLUeUk Overcrowding starting to be a problem in April https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g Bike graveyards in October https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYu4wzy9Lw
See also an article link for those not wanting YouTube: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-...
All this waste makes me feel like we could just make free bikes for everyone. This one company could afford to make all these bikes, and yet they throw them away. We must be able to find a way to make free bikes for everyone who wants them.
We could, you can get a cheap bike for around $100, so making one available for everyone would be a small cost if we thought it'd be valuable.
However, that doesn't cover maintenance or getting a new one when the old is stolen. And it would not be a good bike to start with either, so most people would not want to use it, making it somewhat of an useless investment for society.
As a tourist in Berlin, the Mobike system was great. For just 8 EUR a month I could just grab a working bike, go where I want and just leave it outside. Then I could use the tram to go somewhere else, and use a new bike from the new place.
This without worrying about it getting stolen and being certain I'd find a working bike nearby when I need it. Making it very competetive with regular rental bikes.
I imagine that the low effort required makes it a good option to a free bike for many.
Maybe a subsidised rental bike system would make sense, to cover maintenance and administration but keeping the prices affordable? (I suspect the mobike pricing was some kind of campaign as it was quite low)
Mobike is the same model as ofo. The differences are market specific demand, geography, population density, and taxes and regulation. Of is leaving Dallas, but active in other cities. Of is also leaving Seattle while other companies are staying, so it maybe ofo specifically is having trouble running their business.
Guess their business model didn't work unless the city provided free parking for them.
Like they do for cars?
Dockless bikes have free parking all over town. The expense is in maintenance and redeploying bikes at the start side of mostly 1-way flows, and in Dallas, the new $20/bike-year fee that forces careful utilization management or higher prices (which lowers demand).