Bike Rental Companies Aren't Collecting Abandoned Bikes Because It's Too Expensive: Report

Frank Hersey | Dec 21, 2017 1:00 pm | 2 comments | 2130 reads

This post comes courtesy of our content partners at TechNode.

Despite the transport commission’s demands that impounded bikes be collected by hire bike companies, the cost of doing so, potential per-bike fines when coming forward, and increasing regulation means the firms are staying away, according to an investigation by Q Daily (in Chinese).

Piles of thousands of bikes can be seen on the edges of many cities in China. Their sheer scale and waste has been making headlines worldwide (though the companies are still being awarded for their environmental work). The hire companies themselves are not forthcoming with data for the number of bikes or the cost of dealing with them. But Q Daily discovered information from the Hangzhou Municipal Commission of Urban Management that the labor cost of retrieving a single bicycle is RMB 9.6. This is based on the commission spending RMB 220,000 on human labor costs to deal with 23,000 abandoned bikes belonging to nine hire companies in July this year.

Apply this to the Xinhua estimate of 30,000 bikes in Shanghai’s Hongxing Road bike cemetery and you’re looking at RMB 288,000 in labor costs alone at that one site. Nanjing Urban Management Bureau told the Yangzi Evening News that they have put a fine of RMB 50 per abandoned bike in the city’s bike graveyard and have notified the hire companies.

Cities such as Shanghai and Beijing also have requirements that 95 percent of bikes in circulation have to be in full working order, which means retrieved bikes would have to be checked and repaired. Q Daily calculated that wages for bike repairers add around RMB 3.3 to 6.7 per bike. This would put the per-bike retrieval cost at over RMB 60,000. That’s RMB 2 million for the Hongxing heap.

 

READ: Mobike Awarded Champions of the Earth by UN Environment

Even after this, further regulation in certain areas means further costs. Hangzhou requires a member of maintenance personnel for every 80 bikes. Since October, Shanghai requires five staff per thousand bikes. The 30,000 pile would need 150 staff it the bikes were back on the streets. Q Daily calculates monthly wages at RMB 5,000 to 8,000 per worker or a recurring monthly cost of RMB 750,000 for all, on top of the RMB 2 million for clearing the pile.

Photo: rackcdn.com

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LysanderWrites's picture LysanderWrites Submitted by Guest on Thu, 12/21/2017 - 13:24

Well, this is going to end poorly for everyone involved.

Maybe, and bear with me here, they should have taken their time and not just mass-produced thousands upon thousands of bikes. Now, we're getting more and more reasons for the local governments and the Transport Ministry, in general, to step in and regulate the ever-loving shite out of this industry.

All the grumbling of, "They said I could park anywhere they can't take my freedom away" won't mean a thing when all the havoc attracts the gaze of the Eye of Sauron.

My personal solution involves, in the case of Beijing anyway, establishing storage units spread evenly across the districts where excess bikes can be housed. I know you have Mobike saying they use a lot of meta-data to judge just what areas need however many bikes, but PR speak is as PR speak does.

Pity the man too dense for satire.

All accents are equal, except some accents are more equal than others.

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