"P+W" for food deliverymen in Lujiazui, efficiency not affected
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Police officers remind e-bike delivery personnel to park their e-bikes at a parking spot and walk to their customers.
Ti Gong -
A deliveryman runs to his customers with deliveries in his hands.
Ti Gong -
A plate indicating one such parking spot in the area.
Ti Gong
To address the frequent violations of the e-bike ban by food deliverymen in the heart of Lujiazui in the Pudong New Area, police have introduced a new measure.
The deliverymen are now required to drop their e-bikes at 16 spots within the area and then carry the food to their customers on foot.
Some deliverymen welcomed the new measure on Wednesday, saying that the parking of e-bikes causes at most a little loss of time for deliveries.
The 16 e-bike parking spots are distributed near 18 office buildings, shopping malls and tourist spots in the central business district.
The closest one is only 10 meters from the entrance to a building, and the farthest is 400 meters away. It's estimated that it takes under 1 minute to 6 minutes for the deliverymen to reach the buildings from the parking spots.
To reduce traffic hazard in this busy area, police have long since banned bikes and e-bikes here. However, e-biking deliverymen often break the rules in their race against time to deliver food parcels, forcing area police to step up law enforcement.
At a parking spot near the intersection of Mingshang Road and Lujiazui Ring Road, which is 50 meters away from the IFC Mall and 120 meters from the Mirae Asset Mansion, Zhang Qun, a deliveryman parked his e-bike at noontime on Wednesday. He walked across the ring road to fetch food from a cafe on Binjiang Avenue to take to the IFC, which is 2 minutes away.
Zhang said he had heard of the new e-bike parking rules in the area from his company as well as police officers.
"To be honest, I was one of those deliverymen who used to ignore the e-bike ban to gain some time, but I was also often fined by police and required to walk my e-bike where it was not allowed," he said. "The result was that it took even more time to get to my customers."
It was not the first time that Zhang had used the new parking lots.
"Sometimes it takes a little bit longer for me to reach my customers than usual, but I can reduce the time by walking faster, so I'm almost equally as efficient as before," he said. "What's more important, now I feel safer and no longer need to work under the fear of being fined by police."
Pudong police called the new parking rules for deliverymen "P+W," namely parking and walking, and said they have full support from food delivery businesses which now allow more time for food delivery in the area, and have hired foot food deliverers.
Meanwhile, police have worked with the local government and property management firms of buildings in the area to set up more food cabinets in the buildings so that deliverymen can drop the food there for their customers to fetch instead of waiting for them.
Pudong police said they will continue to crack down on illegal e-bike riding and parking and other e-bike offenses in Lujiazui.
