Jing'an gets tough on shared bikes
Abandoned bikes at an open space on Zhongxing Road yesterday, many of them covered by plants.
Jing’an District government has told ofo and Mobike, two of the city’s biggest bike sharing firms, to reveal which of their customers have been illegally parking bikes in the district.
The move is among nine requirements that the authority sent to the two bike sharing companies in a meeting yesterday.
The district has witnessed rampant illegal parking as the bike sharing industry has boomed, officials said.
About 30,000 shared bikes have been dumped at two open spaces on Zhongxing Road this year. The bikes were moved from streets across the district because of illegal parking. Some of them have been abandoned at the sites for so long that they are covered by plants.
More than 90 percent of the bikes were said to belong to Mobike and ofo. Both firms said this week that they will continue to cooperate with the authorities.
“We saw a surge in shared bikes in July,” said Zhang Tuo, deputy director with the district’s construction and management commission. He added that “19,000 bikes were brought to the construction sites in the first six months, while about 10,000 were collected in July alone.”
The authority said the bike companies can get their bikes back by fulfilling their management responsibility.
However, none of the bike companies had met the requirements yet.
On Tuesday, the authority talked to Mobike and ofo and proposed nine requirements, including providing bike delivering information, such as the operation trucks, the operating time and routes, and registering with local subdistrict authorities the numbers of new bikes being delivered or removed every morning.
The companies should also provide information of the “last riders” who parked the bikes illegally so that traffic police can issue penalties to the violators.
According to traffic violations, illegally parked bikes will mean a warning being issued by the police, or a penalty from 20 to 50 yuan (US$3 to US$7.50). Because the offenses are committed by riders rather than the bike sharing firms who own the bikes, police have found it difficult to issue penalties.
Zhang said, however, that the bike sharing companies’ management on the bikes is largely lagging behind the industry’s booming development.
“The bike sharing companies are launching promotions like free rides every day. If they can take the money and put some of it toward better management, the situation might be improved a lot,” Zhang said.
Last Friday, the city’s transportation commission sent a note to all bike sharing companies in Shanghai to stop launching new bikes in the city until further notice.
