Bike-sharing should have government support

Environmentally friendly concept fits in with the nation's broad objectives and deserves greater encouragement

Bicycle-sharing companies have put more than 200,000 yellow and orange bikes into service in Beijing in the past month. To use a bike for 1 yuan ($0.15; 0.13 euro; 12p) per hour, you have to download the app from one of the companies, pay a few hundred yuan as refundable deposit and scan the code on a bike to unlock or lock it.

The bikes are popular with commuters, many of whom use them to cover the distance between subway stations or bus stops and office or home. But the lack of bicycle parking lots - most of which have made way for car parking lots - poses a challenge to cyclists.

The disorderly parking of such bikes on street corners has created a problem for urban management officers, who do not have the manpower to manage the cyclists and tell them to park the bikes in the right place. Officers in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, confiscated hundreds of the bikes in November because they were "illegally encroaching upon public places". But bike-sharing remains popular in Chengdu three months later.

Local governments in Beijing, Shenzhen and Nanjing are seeking public opinion in drafting rules regulating the bike-sharing business, while other cities wait to learn from the first-tier cities' experiences. Thankfully, the authorities in the first-tier cities have not taken steps as extreme as those taken by the Chengdu officers.

The bike-sharing business is environmentally friendly and supplements the urban public transport system. The new business model, which has its roots in mobile internet apps, is not only an innovative but also a symbolic representation of the rise in public awareness about a greener lifestyle.

It is also in line with the government's philosophy of green, sharing and innovative development. Unlike car-hailing services, which face resistance because they affects the taxi industry's interests and increase traffic problems, the bike-sharing business deserves greater government support.

Hangzhou, Zhejiang province and Zhangjiagang in neighboring Jiangsu province have been successfully operating government-funded bike-rental systems for nearly a decade, even while the sale of cars greatly increased during that period. This shows that bicycles and cars can coexist peacefully so long as local authorities devise a set of rules that encourage the growth of the bike-sharing business.

To begin with, local governments should set a ceiling for shared bikes. The ceiling will not only help maintain public order but also prevent cutthroat competition among bike-sharing operators.

Second, the competition between operators should be on the technological and service fronts, not number of bicycles. For instance, the government could instruct the companies to ensure they use technology to regulate the cyclists' behavior and compel them to park the bikes in parking lots.

Third, apart from building more parking lots and bicycle lanes, the government should also, for instance, ask the bike-sharing operators to record users' irresponsible behavior and deduct points from offenders' personal credit records.

Once known as the "Kingdom of Bicycles", China has experience in bicycle management. It can use that experience to create a bike-friendly environment once again to promote an eco-friendly transport system in cities.

The author is a writer with China Daily. liyang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 03/17/2017 page13)