China’s bike-sharing bubble burst, leading to graveyards of disposed bikes

The supply has vastly outpaced demand and due to the problems caused, the authorities are forced to remove thousands of them

The supply has vastly outpaced demand and due to the problems caused, the authorities are forced to remove thousands of them

During the last few years, the bike-sharing industry grew too quickly in China, with more than 70 private bike-sharing companies trying to step foot into a collective market of 16 million cycles and over 130 million users. The rental process is easy: using a smartphone to unlock them, bikes can be picked up from anywhere on the streets, and can then be dropped off anywhere without the need to park them at a dock. But there was a point when rapid growth vastly outpaced immediate demand. Once the city streets were flooded with millions of brightly colored rental bicycles, parking them practically anywhere led to clogged sidewalks, as infrastructure and regulations were not prepared to cope with such masses. The problem got even more serious when a number of bike sharing companies (the largest of which was Bluegogo) went out of business, resulting to tens of thousands of bicycles left abandoned on the streets, inducing vandalism and abuse.

In order to restore the order again, urban management authorities have removed around 23,000 bicycles to vast storage areas. Piles of impounded, abandoned, and broken bicycles have been created, a sight that has indeed become familiar in many big cities. And although bike sharing remains very popular in China, and will likely continue to grow -alas at a more sustainable rate-, we are left with these images of speculation gone astray.

Source: The Guardian, The Atlantic