Today, you can see people riding the “Yellow bike”, but if you take a close look at the bikes or have a ride with one of them, it’s inventible to notice that most of the sharing bikes have been damaged more or less.
According to the China Bicycle Association, it shows that over the past year, bike trip has doubled than before from 5.5% to 11.6% (Yang Y & Liu X,2017). The reason why sharing bikes all of sudden became so popular, not only because of its convenience to use, but also sharing bikes have replaced and transferred people’s dependence on the public transportation which is overrun most time in china. Therefore, it is important to note that sharing bike is basically public transportation. In other words, scanning the barcode on the sharing bike is just a more convenient way to make the process of renting and didn’t change the property of the shared bicycle. With that being said, the strangest thing is that such asset-heavy business model enjoys subsidies from the government in all aspects. For instance, the public areas are occupied the sharing bikes as an unwritten rule and damaged sharing bikes will be collected by the government department, who is responsible for recycling or even salvage etc. In terms of public roadway, a large number of sharing bicycles often cause traffic jams and riding along pavements.
Sharing bikes bring convenience and changes to people’s daily life with greener transportation, but the reckless social responsibility from the business operator, who only focus on the development and maintenance of the platform rather than taking the responsibility to bring order to the sharing platform. On the other hand, attracted by massive capital investment, more new entrants are rushing into the market of sharing bike sector, leading to vicious competition without proper social responsibility.
Reference:
https://www.ft.com/content/1b0e3486-57c2-11e7-9fed-c19e2700005f
https://www.ft.com/content/5efe95f6-0aeb-11e7-97d1-5e720a26771b
