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Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

theguardian.com

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Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#21

Post by TomMarius »

londons_explore wrote: post #11

I have met a few people who have a very personal vendetta against these bike rental companies. They see them as cluttering the streets and operating without the proper licencing and permissions. To rectify the issue, they will happily throw 50 bikes into the river each time they pass a parking area. They see it as doing the government/the people a favour. The guy I spoke to who did this didn't have a smartphone, so I…

Eh. The government sure seems like a sect. I don't mean by itself, but some people treat it like one, and are becoming a part of the sect they've made up in their heads.

Edit: it'd be nice if the downvoters explained why did they downvote.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#22

Post by roddux »

J-dawg wrote: post #19

Do “dockless” bike hire systems actually work anywhere? There seem to have been so many stories like this. Docked systems seem to work really well (e.g. London), presumably because you can’t take a bike without leaving your credit card details.

'Dockless' bikes have recently made a large appearance in London, too. They're suddenly everywhere, little orange ones. I'm not sure if it's the same company but it's the exactly the same principle. I'm quite surprised there are any left when seemingly the bike can be freed with a small bolt cutter.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#23

Post by [deleted] »

smallnamespace wrote: post #3

This is not a huge surprise—China has very low rates of street crime, which is why the 'leave a bike anywhere' model isn't destroyed by vandalism. Increasingly, as Chinese companies try to expand abroad (valuations are so inflated in China that diversifying geographically is very tempting, much like 80s Japan), they are going to stumble a bit due to less familiarity with other societies, e.g. [1]. [1] https://www.nyt…

[deleted]

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#24

Post by Torwald »

rdtsc wrote: post #4
jmnicolas wrote: post #2

I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent. We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhabitants. The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown from the 14th floor etc etc We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes. Tax payer money well spent?

> stolen and found in Africa That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to impress their peers.

If that was unexpected to you, I'll take it you don't know France very well.

People send stuff back to Africa all the time. I can't say anything about the bike (obviously), but I can tell you what an African friend of mine does for a living; in the middle of Europe.

He sends stuff back to Africa. What he does is he rents out a container on a ship and then collects the payload in small units. I advertises in the African community (mainly Togo) and sells small amount of space on that container. People want to send stuff to their relatives on the continent all the time.

I hope my mildly related anecdote was helpful.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#25

Post by [deleted] »

kiliankoe wrote: post #9
rdtsc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stolen and found in Africa That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to impress their peers.

Same idea as stealing them in Germany and selling them further east. You're not going to find buyers locally, and shipping a lot of stolen bikes to somewhere where you can offload them for cheap is probably a somewhat viable business.

[deleted]

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#26

Post by roddux »

voltagex_ wrote: post #13
Gpugnet wrote: post #5

What did they expect ? Criminality is high in France, and higher in Paris.

Got some figures to back up that claim? http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/Unit...

Unless my reading comprehension has taken a serious dive this morning, all the sources NationMaster lists appear to be a good 5 to 10 years out of date. In other words, that would exclude information about crimes since the recent demographic changes that Paris has experienced.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#27

Post by Tharkun »

There's only so much space in cities. Getting rid of bikes is the wrong move. Cars take up so much more space and cause a plethora of negative effects.

Interesting to see that this approach of vandalism is working. It's a shame people aren't physically strong enough to throw cars into rivers and from rooftops. Perhaps then Paris could be rid of its car problem.

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#29

Post by Ecco »

stinos wrote: post #20
Ecco wrote: post #8

For some reason nobody talks about the extreme nuisance of those bikes. Customers would just drop them literally anywhere : on the sidewalk blocking pedestrians, right in the middle of the street blocking cars, in front of building doors preventing people from entering, etc... Such a terrible nuisance, and something to be expected since there is such little room in the Parisian streets (you can’t seriously expect cus…

nuisance of those bikes Well, actually, the nuissance of the people not knowing how/where to put the bike away properly and/or being too lazy to do so or just being too selfish and not caring about others at all. Just like there's always this couple of car drivers parking where they shouldn't etc. But with these bikes it's just way easier to do. Just like it's also way easier for you or any one else to pick up the bi…

> Just like it's also way easier for you to pick up the bike and put it away 2m further if that's less annoying

Which is exactly the point: I don't use those bikes, and still I have to get them out of my way. That's the nuisance.

That's exactly why parking in such places is illegal in the first place. But with those rental bikes this is very hard to enforce (because it's virtually impossible for the police to tell who parked the bike). And I think Gobee should have been banned in Paris because their whole business model encourages such a behavior in cities where there is so little parking places.

> Perhaps not always right in front of the place one wants to be, but still..

I agree, but that's precisely the issue. The problem here is that the model encourages users to just not care about the bike (because they're anonymous and because they don't care about the bike). Sure, in the end, if users were perfect Gobee would be great. But you know this is never the case as soon as there is some level of anonymity (why do would most websites have captchas then?).

Re: Gobee.bike pulls out of France due to mass destruction of its bike fleet

#30

Post by gt_ »

Tharkun wrote: post #27

There's only so much space in cities. Getting rid of bikes is the wrong move. Cars take up so much more space and cause a plethora of negative effects. Interesting to see that this approach of vandalism is working. It's a shame people aren't physically strong enough to throw cars into rivers and from rooftops. Perhaps then Paris could be rid of its car problem.

Are you really suggesting Paris might be short on bicycles now?
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