Han Ximin

    ximhan@126.com

    MOBIKE, an app-based bicycle service provider, has designated 16 preferred locations in communities and bustling business areas for parking its bicycles in cooperation with Excellence Property.

    Four locations near Jintian Road and Shangmeilin Metro Station in Futian District, and Taoyuan and Houhai Metro stations in Nanshan District have been put into use.

    In mid-January 2017, 12 other locations near residential and commercial properties developed by Excellence Property will be put into operation.

    It is the first time that Mobike has set up preferred parking locations in Shenzhen after its bicycles had drawn criticism for illegal parking. It is also setting an example for authorities in how to regulate app-based bicycles, which are booming in the city.

    There are around 60,000 such bicycles on Shenzhen streets and the number is expected to reach around 100,000 as several app-based bicycle operators in the city are gearing up to compete for the Shenzhen market.

    “This is a good practice to solve the problem of illegal parking,” a regular bike user surnamed Ju said near Shangmeilin Metro Station.

    Ju had often seen some bike riders randomly parking the bicycles on pedestrian roads and even inside a housing estate. Other bike users in neighboring housing estates couldn’t use the bicycles, even though they could locate them on the app.

    According to Teng Fei, a manager with Shenzhen Mobike, the company will cooperate with the management of landmark office buildings and housing estates to set up preferred locations for parking.

    Shenzhen traffic police announced recently that the authority would regulate the illegal parking of app-based bikes by imposing a fine of 20 yuan (US$2.87) on violators.

    In a joint announcement a week ago, police said that they would build a bike user platform based on Mobike’s ID-based user registration system.

    In Shanghai, Mobike has set up 230 preferred locations for parking including 71 near Metro stations. In Guangzhou last week, the company established the first Mobike community in China through cooperation with Guangzhou Asian Games City, where 3 preferred locations and 12 parking stands were opened. The property management of Asian Games City patrols and regulates parking in the community.  

    App-based bikes locked up at subway exit

   SEVERAL hundred app-based bicycles were locked up near Exit D of the Nanshan Metro Station by the property management of a nearby estate housing, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

    The bikes have been locked up there for a long time, and the number of them recently increased to several hundred.

    Beside the well-arranged locked up bicycles, there are also a few other bikes placed randomly, which were damaged by some motorcycle taxi drivers who were upset by the decline in their business after the the app-based bikes were put into the market.

    Due to the ongoing construction of the Metro line, part of a road at the involved estate, Guangcai Xinshiji, had been taken for construction use.

    Howver, app-based bike users mistakened the section as being open to the public and parked the bikes, which were “soon locked up by the property management company with no further notice signed by the company to remind the users,” said a staff member of Mobike.

    Mobike was negotiating with the property management company to solve the problem, but the negotiation wasn’t very successful. The property management company required Mobike to pay a fine of 20,000 yuan (US$2,881), which the app-based bike provider considered unreasonable.

    Mobike hopes app-based bike users will take more care to properly park their bikes.

    (Zhang Qian, Liu Shiyang)