Bike Sharing in China

1 A Design Solution and the Assumptions to Shared Bike in China Design is the application of art in defining problems and developing new suitable solutions. Bicycles are a significant mode of transportation and therefore a crucial part of everyday life in China. From the 1970s to the late 1990s, bicycles were the primary mode of transportation; however, in the early 2000s, the government created bicycle-reduction policies to spur the growth of the motor vehicle industry and increase the usage of the country's public transportation infrastructure. Today, Chinese cities have some of the worst traffic congestion in the world due to a rapid increase in the population size and resultant pressure exerted on the mass transit infrastructure. It, therefore, became essential for the government to resort once more to encouraging bicycle usage. This paper examines the concept of bike-share in China, its shortcomings and future challenges, and also develops a creative solution to streamline the bike-share industry.

Current Situation and Short Comings of Shared Bike in China In recent years, the private sector has created dozens of bike-sharing companies which essentially operate by leasing bikes to users temporarily when required. Chinese bike-share companies such as Ofo and Mobike enable users to rent bicycles through an app on their smartphones for a low cost per ride and then park them at their destination when they are done (Dolnicar, 2017). It is therefore not necessary for citizens to own their own bicycles since they can easily access a bike anywhere and at any time.

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While this was initially an excellent concept, intense competitive rivalry resulted in an oversupply of bicycles on the streets, such that there are now approximately 16 million bikes, some of which are in bad condition or have been abandoned by bike-share startups which have since shut down due to poor revenues and intense competition. The key idea behind bike sharing is the convenience of accessing a bicycle at a time and place of one’s convenience.

This convenience has rapidly become a nuisance on China where several users have resorted to abusing and abandoning the hired bikes parking lots, gardens, building entrances and fences; thus, creating disorder and confusion in a previously ordered space.

To a large extent, the bike-sharing concept has been unsuccessful since China’s transport infrastructure is already overwhelmed and is not large enough to accommodate the millions of bicycles that were released onto the already-crowded streets by the bike share companies (Proctor, 2014). Riders would park their bikes on the streets haphazardly, and some would even abandon them after use. Over time, this has resulted in huge piles comprising tens of thousands of broken, neglected bicycles all over cities. By 2017, in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, there were bikes dumped all over the streets such that it had become challenging for people to maneuver around them, and it had become necessary to hire workers to arrange the bikes neatly to reduce the congestion (Ricarda, Bouncken, & Andreas, 2018). It is, therefore, vital to develop a solution to the bike-share problem in China to ensure there is a match between the demand and supply of bicycles in these cities.

Future Challenges of Shared Bike in China Bike sharing programs often become unsuccessful due to unequal riding patterns. For instance, during peak transit hours, if everyone alights a train and grabs a bicycle, there will

3 be a shortage of bicycles at the train station and too many bikes in another location. Due to the oversupply of bicycles in China, there are many bicycle graveyards all over the town which have resulted from dozens of bike-share companies going bankrupt due to excessive competition in the industry. The municipal governments in the large cities of China are grappling with the challenges of disposing of the abandoned bikes and in some cases, confiscating the illegally parked bikes.

Solutions to China’s Bike Share Problem Bike sharing if implemented poorly can introduce complications to a city's transport system and lead to further traffic congestion. One of the leading causes of this failure is the extremely low cost of renting a bicycle which causes riders not to value the service offered and therefore leading to its misuse.

Oversupply of Shared Bikes Bike sharing in China was developed as a solution to the complex traffic congestion problem but has with time become a problem in itself due to the oversupply of bicycles by bike share companies, compared to the ability of the infrastructure to handle all the bicycles produced. To overcome the challenges caused by the excessive supply of bicycles, the municipal government should regulate the formation of bike share companies to ensure that there is a match between the supply and demand of the bike. Secondly, the municipals should put a restriction on the number of bicycles that bike sharing companies release on the streets to a number that will not lead to the excessive congestion of city streets (Reum, 2018).

Thirdly, bike sharing companies should design software that only allows the user to finish their ride when they have parked the bicycle properly. This will help to maintain an orderly system of parking bicycles.

4 Vandalism and Theft In every human settlement, there are often individuals who display anti-social behavior. This has been the case in China where in some cases, bike share users have vandalized or stolen bicycles, and others have randomly been thrown away in rivers, parking lots and bins. The issue of vandalism can be tackled by assembling the bicycles out of tough tamper-proof materials which will make the bikes difficult to dismantle and destroy. The companies should also install GPS tracking and alarms on the bicycles to alert the companies in case of vandalism and theft.

Parking There are over 16 million rental bikes in China’s main cities, which is more than the infrastructure can currently handle. As a result, users park their bikes randomly when they are done using a bike which contributes significantly to the menace of discarded bikes. The municipal government should expand its cycling infrastructure by increasing the number of cycle lanes and the parking spaces allocated to bike share companies.

To tackle careless parking, the municipal government should create clear rules regarding the use and parking of bicycles to clarify what is the expected good conduct and what is considered to be poor conduct with regard to the use of bicycles. Additionally, the bike share companies can implement a loyalty points system that rewards points to users when they park well. When these points accumulate, they can be redeemed for a free ride.

Similarly, to enforce good conduct, users who contravene the rules should be penalized by being removed from the app (PewResearchCenter, 2016). The objective of these strategies is to ensure that the bikes are readily available to users when needed and that they are parked in designated areas to avoid congesting the city and obstructing the public.

5 Future Development of the Shared Bicycle Despite its apparent failure in China, bike sharing is an environmentally friendly, innovative concept that has the potential to revolutionize a country’s transport industry.

However, in the pursuit of profits, bike sharing companies in China overestimated the level of demand and overinvested in the sector, which has led to the excessive supply of bikes, many of which are now dumped all over cities, in what is popularly referred to as ‘bicycle graveyards'. To correct this problem and ensure that in future the bike sharing industry is better developed, the government should implement some measures. Firstly, the government should ensure that bike share companies do not introduce any new bicycles before the dumped bicycles are properly recycled and disposed of. Once the disposal and recycling program is underway, the government should also intervene by making it compulsory for the existing bike sharing companies to reregister by submitting a plan of how they will run their businesses sustainably, without straining the existing infrastructural resources (McDaniel, Lamb, & Hair, 2013). To prevent a pile-up of bicycles, in future, the sharing companies should work on creating a proportionate match between the demand and supply of bicycles to avoid straining the transport system further. Developing the shared bicycle system also entails prohibiting free form parking, and penalizing cyclists who do. The municipal should create well-marked designated parking spaces to ensure the orderly parking of bicycles.

Additionally, the government can solve the issues by increasing cycleways and parking infrastructure to accommodate the ever-increasing number of cyclists in the city. In the future, it should be mandatory for all bike share companies to install software and alarms on every bicycle that will alert the companies in the event that the bicycles are vandalized.

Conclusion

6 Bike sharing is a relatively new concept in China's transport industry that relies heavily on the government's ability to provide cycling infrastructure and cyclists' ability to use the rented bikes responsibly. Bike share companies also have the responsibility to invest responsibly in the bike sharing economy; over-investing leads to an excessive supply of bicycles which strains the transport infrastructure and leads to bicycle dumping; while underinvesting leads to the low supply of bikes which causes a strain on the alternative modes of transportation. The government should regulate the industry to create a balance between overambitious profit-seeking investment and sustainable investment.

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References Dolnicar, S. (2017). Peer to Peer Accommodation Networks. Goodfellow Publishers Limited.

McDaniel, C., Lamb, C. & Hair, J. (2013). Introduction to marketing. Australia: SouthWestern/Cengage Learning.

PewResearchCenter, (2016). Shared, collaborative, and on demand: the new digital economy.

Available Online: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/05/19/shared-home-sharingservices Proctor, T. (2014). Strategic Marketing: An Introduction. Routledge.

Reum, C. (2018). Shortcut Your Startup. Simon & Schuster, Incorporated.

Ricarda B. Bouncken, & Andreas J. Reuschl. (2018). Coworking-spaces: how a phenomenon of the sharing economy builds anovel trend for the workplace and for entrepreneurship. Review of Managerial Science12:1, 317-334.