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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?

#71

Post by petre »

sethherr wrote: post #15
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US, the majority of streets have at least a lane of space taken up by parking. If half of that was offered to bikes there wouldn't be any bike parking issues.

It's the same in biger cities in France, Eastern Europe, even in Germany, although the Germans are better behaved probably because of huge fines.

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

#72

Post by xvilka »

esturk wrote: post #65
xvilka wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an economic issue, it's a human nature. Just most of the people lack morals, no matter what country. Sad, but true.

What's easier to change? An business model or human nature? Clever people already know not to fight human nature and build their business models around it.

I'm not saying we should change human nature, it's impossible at the one human life scale. Just correcting this is not exactly an economics. But yes, of course business model should just keep this in mind. Even sharing economy can adapt to this requirement and still be profitable.

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

#74

Post by denzil_correa »

nkrumm wrote: post #25

It's worth pointing out that that the Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) has been providing this sort of service for at least a decade (I remember seeing them parked outside of train stations in 2008): https://www.callabike-interaktiv.de/de/registrieren

There are many such bike sharing services in Germany like LidleBike [0] and NextBike [1]. But, I think it's relatively much more expensive than owning your own bike.

[0] https://www.lidl-bike.de/de

[1] https://www.nextbike.net/en/

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

#75

Post by xvedejas »

Pxtl wrote: post #52
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an article fairly recently on HN about how bike sharing is failing in San Francisco because it's so hilly. All the bikes would start at the top of hills and end up at the bottom and there was no system in place to relocate them back to the top.

Seems like a pricing issue. Tag the stations by elevation and make a price hike for trips that start at a high station and end at a low one, and vice versa. Does SF not have an organization manually rebalancing teh stations? Here in Hamilton you see pickups with trailers full of rental-bikes being redistributed.

They do have people manually re-balancing the stations (I've seen them loading up a trailer with dozens of bikes around 2nd and Brannan). How often they do the re-balancing right now, however, that I don't know.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by w-m »

neves wrote: post #47
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an article fairly recently on HN about how bike sharing is failing in San Francisco because it's so hilly. All the bikes would start at the top of hills and end up at the bottom and there was no system in place to relocate them back to the top.

In the somewhat hilly Madrid, the system is of electric bikes. In Paris, if you leave the bike in Montmartre (high hill) they give more time in your hide.

> In Paris, if you leave the bike in Montmartre (high hill) they give more time in your hide.

This incentive seems to have little to no effect. Bike stations on top of the Paris hills (Montmartre, Belleville, Pantheon, ..) are almost always completely empty.

It's not a huge issue in Paris as the city is mostly flat and you can walk down the hills within 5 minutes usually, finding a bike. The same system would fail miserably in a in a predominantly hilly city such as SF.

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

#78

Post by Taniwha »

b6 wrote: post #32

Rudeness and inconsiderateness are everywhere, but as anyone who has lived in China for a long period of time can tell you, it is endemic in China. I'm not aware of any place where the problem is generally thought to be as bad. Why, I don't know. The one-two punches of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution come to mind. As to why China was affected more than other places that suffered similar trauma, maybe i…

I think there's a cultural thing going on here - in many places people are paid to sweep the streets so the city doesn't put out public trash cans ... people aren't being 'dirty' here, they just put their trash in different places

(and yes I find it hard to throw stuff on the ground too, I hold on to it in China, I'm socialised that way)

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

#79

Post by keithpeter »

The OA links to an article about dockless bike sharing in Manchester UK [1]. Quote from the Manchester article

"On launch day, the Chinese designer told me the bikes were basically indestructible and should last four years without maintenance. It took a matter of hours before local scallies worked out how to disable the GPS trackers and smash off the back wheel locks."

Truly "the street finds its own uses for things". The kids are hacking the bikes for fun and display of prowess which is normal-ish behaviour for adolescents. These objects suddenly arrived in the world, so the local teenagers decided to explore this new and interesting crop.

The OA mentions New York city authorities sending cease and desist letters to a dock-less bike sharing company in the city. I'm hardly surprised, the pavements need active management at the best of times.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche...

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

#80

Post by rflrob »

stephengillie wrote: post #57
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.

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 disagree with your assessment that you'd have to be crazy to do it.
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