OVER 500 app-based bikes were piled up near a Shekou park in Shenzhen on Sunday, while some of them had broken parts that were deliberately sabotaged, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

    These app-based bikes, operated by several bike-sharing companies including Mobike, ofo, Bluegogo and Xiaoming Bike, were found near Wanxiashan Park in Shekou on Sunday afternoon. Handlebars and baskets were left on the ground after being pulled off the bikes.

    Mobike and Bluegogo’s apps showed that all of the available bikes in the vicinity had been piled up at the site.

    A resident from a nearby urban village, surnamed He, said that these bikes had been gradually piling up since a week ago. He said that some people randomly parked the bikes in the middle of the road in the village, which caused an inconvenience for villagers.

    “I assumed the security guards piled up these bikes, but this is not a solution,” he said. “I saw someone pull the wheels off a bike and throw them on the roadside a few days ago. The management of app-based bikes is really a headache.”

    A volunteer, identified as Long, who helped Bluegogo deal with the illegal parking of bikes, said he found some bikes piled up at the site Friday and reported the issue to Bluegogo.

    A Bluegogo staffer, surnamed Lai, said that the company’s volunteers attempted to retrieve some bikes from the pile, but they were stopped by the village’s security guards. “The security guards demanded that our company leadership come over to negotiate,” he said.

    Lai said that the random parking of app-based bikes did cause some problems for the village’s management, but it shouldn’t have led to a situation like this. “This is an act of deliberate sabotage and they didn’t communicate with us before taking action,” Lai said, adding that they will continue negotiating with the village’s security guards.  (Zhang Yang)