SHARED bike operators will be banned from releasing new bikes in Shenzhen for three years if they are found illegally putting bikes in the city or failing to return their users’ deposits, according to a draft regulation released by the city’s transport commission Tuesday, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

Riders who are fined three times for illegally riding or parking bicycles randomly will be blacklisted and could be suspended or prohibited from using shared bikes, according to the draft, which specifies a penalty mechanism for both dishonest shared bike operators and riders.

Dishonest acts by app-based bike operators include violating relevant laws, refusing to cooperate with law enforcement officers when the latter are collecting evidence for an investigation, refusing to rectify irregularities within the designated period of time and violating the relevant requirements on bike parking, bike delivery, deposit refunding and bike recycling.

Residents will be blacklisted if they are found sabotaging, stealing or posting advertisements on shared bikes, and will be fined by the authorities if caught illegally riding or randomly parking on three or more occasions.

The transport commission will release monthly statistics on the credit status of app-based bike riders and publish them on the government’s supervision platform. Meanwhile, the record of blacklisted users and residents will be included in the personal credit information system.

By the end of 2018, there were mainly two shared bike enterprises operating in Shenzhen. The total number of active shared bikes was about 530,000 and the number of registered users had reached 25.48 million, according to the Daily.

The draft is soliciting public suggestions until April 8.

Bike sharing took off in China in 2017, with dozens of bike-sharing companies quickly flooding city streets with millions of brightly colored rental bicycles. However, the rapid growth vastly outpaced immediate demand and overwhelmed Chinese cities, where infrastructure and regulations were not prepared to handle a sudden flood of millions of shared bicycles.

Some riders would park bikes anywhere, or just abandon them, resulting in bicycles piling up and blocking already-crowded streets and pathways. As cities impounded derelict bikes by the thousands, they moved quickly to cap growth and regulate the industry.  (Zhang Yu)