serpentza
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2017–2018
10:02 · 525K views · Apr 23, 2017
An expat YouTuber in China shows how dockless bike-sharing, once loved, has been flooded by competing companies. Bikes pile up, get abandoned in odd places and are vandalised, with footage from around the city.
HN commenters point to it as a brief, accurate insider overview of what went wrong with oversupplied dockless bike sharing.
4 comments from Hacker News
I've never used one myself but I've seen a lot of criticism of the Chinese implementation of dockless shared bikes. Here's a video that summarizes the problem: this video (you only need to watch a few minutes to get the idea) The purpose is to have them everywhere so they're easy to find, but that's also the problem -- if you have too many companies involved, or an irresponsible company involved that just dumps bikes in the city, there are too many bikes. Bikes get left on sidewalks, in streets, in parks, etc. The docked bike share systems don't have that problem because you have to return them to a designated location, but obviously it makes the bikes less ubiquitous. Portland has a pretty good system where there are many stations, but if a station is full you can lock it at a nearby public rack for free (the station knows it's full). You can also drop it off at any random public rack in the service area for $2. The app tells you where all the available bikes are: [LINK]
? Yes they do. It's a real problem. There are a lot of people working to make things better, but there is a lot of work to be done. I find this fellow's assessment accurate, if you want a brief overview. this video
I found this video by ex-pat YouTuber Serpentza to be quite informative on the issue, and he has been living in China for long enough to have an insider's perspective. Well worth a watch. this video
It's interesting to see the timeline in serpentza's youtube videos about bike sharing in China Starts out well in January [LINK] Overcrowding starting to be a problem in April this video Bike graveyards in October [LINK]