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As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

nytimes.com

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Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#81

Post by vorg »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #14
sethherr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of space taken up by car parking makes me generally unsympathetic to complaints about bike sharing "taking up too much public space" - though perhaps there is less car parking in china.

Space taken by car-parking is typically in dedicated parking lots: out of the way and doesn't impede public rights-of-way - compare to having bicycles ridden on sidewalks and interfering with car traffic.

> Space taken by car-parking is typically in dedicated parking lots: out of the way and doesn't impede public rights-of-way

In some developed cities, but in most of China cars are usually parked on the sidewalks. When they're angle-parked along the full width of the sidewalk, pedestrians need to drop onto the roadside to continue walking.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#82

Post by barry-cotter »

juiyout wrote: post #50

If there is money tied to rider's mannerism, I would be confident to predict that almost all the observed issues will be resolved.

There's a ¥300 deposit to get started with Mobike. You can get kicked from the service and lose your deposit for egregious behaviour. I recently forgot to lock a bike after use and lost 15 points from my account. You start off with a hundred points and get one per ride. If you go below 85 you pay much, much higher hourly rates than normal. All of these issues are soluble.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#83

Post by rhaps0dy »

How about docked bike sharing? Barcelona has been having one for some time, it doesn't have many of the problems here, even though our suzhi is not very high. It does have the problem that you have to start and finish in a dock, but that seems minor.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#84

Post by exDM69 »

adrianN wrote: post #37
Luc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as novice bicyclists can have difficulty maintaining 25mph That's 40 km/h. Are you trolling or is that a typo? I've been bicycling nearly daily for >45 years and I've never gone that fast.

It's not terribly hard for a fit male to maintain 40km/h for a while on a nice racing bike. But I think 25km/h is a more reasonable top speed. It's also the speed where electric bicycles stop supporting the driver, at least here in Germany.

40 km/h average is crazy! I can get slightly above 20 km/h sustained average for about an hour. There's no way I could double that, and I'm pretty fit.

My 20 km/h includes a few stops and normal traffic so it's probably closer to 30 on a flat straight with no traffic. Perhaps a special bike with narrow tires could help, but that's less versatile (and I need to ride on dirt roads too).

The highest I've measured is 54 km/h, on a big down hill pedalling full strength on top gear. I regularly exceed 30 km/h but not for sustained periods.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#85

Post by quanticle »

rflrob wrote: post #80
stephengillie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't owned a bicycle since I have been able to drive a car, so my estimation may be wildly inaccurate. I grew up in a distant suburban/rural area in the Seattle region, where the nearest stores are 15 minutes away at 45mph. These are mostly 2-lane country roads, with 6 foot drainage ditches on the sides on the roads instead of sidewalks, and sometimes even large delivery semi trucks drive these. You'd have to be…

I occasionally drive up by Point Reyes in California, and on the weekends, Highway 1 near there is a popular cycling route—packs of Lycra-clad cyclists along a narrow 2-lane, winding road with hills on one side and a short cliff to the ocean on the other. You definitely have to be careful passing them, but given that the news is not routinely filled with headlines of "another cyclist plowed down on Hwy 1", I'd disagr…

>packs of Lycra-clad cyclists

There is a huge difference in both perceived and actual safety between being part of a large group of bicyclists that occupies a significant fraction of the lane and being a lone bicyclist going along the verge of the road while cars and trucks pass you at 65 mph.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#86

Post by barry-cotter »

chairmanwow wrote: post #39

I am currently living in Shanghai and I use Mobike, Ofo, or 赶赶单车 to get to work everyday. I have logged over 250km between the services. This article is largely unfair. The city has large swaths of sidewalk established as bike parking zones. I can almost always find a bike zone within 10-50m. Furthermore, there are almost always parking attendants and security guards outside of malls and subway stations ensuring that…

I largely concur. I think the bike parking zones pre-date the bike sharing startups but they've been expanded and get more use now. Unfortunately there are plenty of people who leave the bikes in their compounds but as problems go that's pretty small and will become even less of a problem once they decide to ramp up enforcement over growth.

If the NYT wanted to run a piece about Chinese manners and consideration they could have found a better subject for a hit piece easily.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#87

Post by usnigg »

I've been living in several European countries for the last 20+ years and believe me vandalism is far worse here than in any Asian country I've visited so far including China. I think this article is at best a good example of pointless journalism and at worst just another thinly veiled racist china bashing. Sad to see it gets so much attention on HN.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#88

Post by Gigablah »

princeb wrote: post #23

melbourne and singapore are also seeing these problems. long story short, there are twats in every country. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/obike-responds-to-crit... https://vulcanpost.com/608463/bike-sharing-singapore/

Yeah, there were a few highly-publicized cases of bike vandalism in Singapore but thankfully it seems to be subsiding. I'm actually seeing a lot more bikes from multiple bike-sharing companies around my neighbourhood these days. It's definitely catching on.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#89

Post by sr_fahrenheit »

sberder wrote: post #70
chairmanwow wrote: post #39

I am currently living in Shanghai and I use Mobike, Ofo, or 赶赶单车 to get to work everyday. I have logged over 250km between the services. This article is largely unfair. The city has large swaths of sidewalk established as bike parking zones. I can almost always find a bike zone within 10-50m. Furthermore, there are almost always parking attendants and security guards outside of malls and subway stations ensuring that…

Living in Shanghai, closing on 2000km on mobike only. Try going to the flower market on wanhangdu lu and you'll get an idea of the abuse of both bikes and pavement. I love the service and I think it's a fantastic alternative to pubic transports/taxi/DiDi but you can't deny the absolute lack of care of a lot of users. I regularly see: * Bikes locked with a separate lock * Bikes parked inside compounds you can't access…

This mirrors my experience in Berlin. In nice neighbourhoods you see the bikes parked nicely, in rougher ones like where I live you often see them scattered on the road, half broken. Being Berlin, I bet there's also lots of anti-capitalist rage against them - I see a lot of them around my train station with a flat back wheel and I suspect it's from the same angry person, and all this started happening when they got rebranded from DB-bikes (DB is the national train company, someone correct me if it's actuall private) into Lidl bikes and got rid of the requirement of parking at docking stations at the same time that more companies started appearing. I bet also if you go to Frankfurt or München you don't see this kind of carnage.

Re: As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?

#90

Post by adrianN »

exDM69 wrote: post #84
adrianN wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not terribly hard for a fit male to maintain 40km/h for a while on a nice racing bike. But I think 25km/h is a more reasonable top speed. It's also the speed where electric bicycles stop supporting the driver, at least here in Germany.

40 km/h average is crazy! I can get slightly above 20 km/h sustained average for about an hour. There's no way I could double that, and I'm pretty fit. My 20 km/h includes a few stops and normal traffic so it's probably closer to 30 on a flat straight with no traffic. Perhaps a special bike with narrow tires could help, but that's less versatile (and I need to ride on dirt roads too). The highest I've measured is 54…

Of course 40km/h does not include traffic, hills, or wind. It is also pretty crucial to have a bike with a racing geometry so that your head is low and air resistance is reduced.
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