Too many bikes in China....

[duff_duffy]

Think this was posted here before but cool photos of all the abandoned bikes in China.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/amazing-drone-photos-abandoned-bikes-slideshow-wp-184518716.html

[verticaldoug]

It's probably an impound lot in Shanghai for bikes from Ofo, MoBike and BlueGogo. (You see all the colours?)

Ofo and MoBike raised US$1.2b and US$900mm for their bike sharing schemes. (That's raised not valuation). Ofo alone had 6.5mm bikes in its network. BlueGoGo which was thought to be one of the most viable, had 1.5mm bikes, 20mm users who paid 99RMB (15USD) and raised US$90mm in venture capital, went bust earlier this year. There are 40 bike share companies.

[Alaska Mike]

I think it's sad. What it represents to me is all of those people who once rode bikes and have now moved on to cars because it's viewed as something more affluent people do.

Meanwhile in the States, cycling is seen as the province of rich old white men...

[seahuston]

To clarify for Alaska Mike, these are bikes from Chinese bike share companies, not privately owned by citizens. They operate on a dockless model with an app to unlock the bikes. Most cities didn't (or still don't) regulate the bikes so the only way to break into an established market is to have greater and cheaper supply than the competitors. These graveyards are the result of a company pulling out of a city (deemed non profitable), a company being kicked out of a city (Suzhou and a few other major cities banned bike shares), poor planning, or impounding from local police.

It's fascinating to see all of these bikes and frankly disgusting to think that they'll sit there and rot until scrap steel prices get low enough for them to have any value.

As a frequent traveler in China, I think dockless bike share is an amazing system. Much better than any dock system I have used. It's so great to be able to grab a bike anywhere and leave it anywhere. I rarely take taxis now because the bikes make the metro so easy. It's also great to see so many people in the city using the bikes.

For those interested, Mobike published a really interesting white paper on their bikes. It's obviously only going to share the benefits.
https://mobike.com/global/public/Mobike%20-%20White%20Paper%202017_EN.pdf