I have been following the replies to my initial message about the Chinese bike share surplus situation. Thanks to all who have replied. I really got a good laugh out of the Slate.com link from (Elese Daniel Lee?). That was a fun and a useful perspective. Still, as with many folks I think, the images of tens of thousands of bikes piled up is shocking. I also very much appreciate the perspective that these bikes represent a resource that may be junk to the initial manufacturers but they may represent a functional and even valuable resource to someone else. I am a new entrant into this world of 'community' bike shops and international bike-aid projects. I am starting to learn that there are financial and logistical challenges to converting an abandoned bike into a usable tool/vehicle for someone who may need it.
Front Street Community Bike Works Coos Bay, OR https://www.facebook.com/CoosCommunityBikes/inbox/?selected_item_id=10000019...
On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 1:04 PM, < thethinktank-request@lists.bikecollectives.org> wrote:
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- Re: China Bike Share Surplus? (Ho?i Vi Nguy?n)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Hoài Vi Nguyễn" holita.vn@gmail.com To: The Think Tank thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org Cc: Bcc: Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2018 22:31:49 -0700 Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] China Bike Share Surplus? Dockless bikeshare just implemented in San Diego a few months ago and usual issues have arisen with the use. Bikes are left blocking entryways, wheelchair ramps, and walkways. Users have thrown them into water bodies, hung them from trees, thrown them into the numerous canyons.
Business bros ride them through the downtown district. But more importantly, houseless people have adopted them. The design considerations of a shared bike: durability, low maintenance, easy to ride: make them desirable as a poorer person's bike. The only limitation is minimal internal gearing isn't enough for many of the hills in the city. Bikes are often appropriated or stripped for parts.
As a bike kitchen, the only concern I have is being able to maintain and repair these bikes as some of their components seem to use non-standard tools / be non-standard sizes.
The effect of bikeshare though has been pretty cool. More inexperienced riders-- riding erratically improperly illegally-- has made biking more visible. Drivers are more on alert for cyclists.
Hoai Vi Nguyen core volunteer Bikes del Pueblo
On Wed, Apr 4, 2018 at 11:24 PM, Cyclista Nicholas <cyclista@inventati.org
wrote:
Still not as horrifying as the bikes, which are genuinely actually abandoned, as opposed to parked.
Speaking for myself and my volunteers and staff, we are entirely competent to assess whether components and frames are safe or usable and if it came to garbage, recycling, or reuse, we'd be in the position to determine which was appropriate. I have no doubt that a great number of community bike shops out there have staff similarly capable.
We turn away plenty of bikes due to lack of fitness, but I'd hate people not to take them to us at all, thinking in advance that the bikes are worthless. Reuse should always be explored. I cannot imagine that the majority of those thousands of bikes failed in a fundamental structural way. That looked to me like pure foolishness and really poor planning.
cyclista NIcholas
On 2018-04-05 04:45, Elese Daniel wrote:
i work in the station-based bikeshare world and i'm privy to much of the conversation/trepidation re dockless bikeshare. in concept, i so totally respect the acquiring in mass of discarded bikes for co-op and community use/resale-- because, yes, get the ppl bikes-- but, in the current dockless bikeshare/for-profit/venture capital world, i share some earlier voiced concerns regarding the safety, condition and rideability of the bikes you'd receive -- which most likely originated as cheap bikes to begin with -- cheap as in weak materials produced at high quantity, low quality. (idk though-- trash... treasure.. sometimes one in the same)
on a lighter and truer note: my partner shared this article with me yesterday and i really loved it <3 https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture -graveyards-of-unused-dockless-vehicles-in-american-cities.html
-lee
On Wed, Apr 4, 2018 at 8:11 PM, Cyclista Nicholas < cyclista@inventati.org> wrote:
China may be weird about bikes in general. I had a friend who lived in a
smaller city in Fujian province for to years, and they lived in an enormous apartment building with a very large area for bike parking in the courtyard. They said there were around a hundred bikes there obviously long since abandoned and rotting, but it was very taboo to remove them - you would get into serious trouble, even though the owners had long since moved away.
Those pictures in the Atlantic turned my stomach. Staggeringly sad. If they have some huge capacity for metal recycling that will eventually take care of that surplus, but if so how long do they wait to melt them down? They could put a medium-sized country on bicycles with just the quantity shown in those pictures.
Thanks for the heads up about this problem, Eric. We're getting a new bikeshare in our town in a couple of months, and maybe we can get ahead of contributing to this problem, at least.
cyclista Nicholas
On 2018-04-03 16:15, Gabriel Trainer wrote:
Those are frightening pictures! One or a few bikes are cool. Thousands
of bikes piled together are no better than a trash heap. Gabriel
On Mon, Apr 2, 2018, 3:10 PM Clint Watson <clint@bicyclecollective.org
wrote:
I had a meeting with the Director of SLC Greenbike last week regarding
this. It's a huge and growing problem for many cities in the US. Apparently the business model for these operations is modeled after Uber or other tech startups--don't worry about profits, just get investment money and dominate the market/run other bike share companies out of business by offering the service free of charge to cities.
The bikes average $200 each and because of that they are being used as a disposable resource. They're being discarded, damaged, and vandalized at staggering rates in places like Dallas.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/05/technology/dallas-bikeshare- limebike-ofo/index.html
And Seattle is now starting to see similar problems.
I don't see it as a sustainable solution to transportation: if we're going to start seeing entire landfills full of bikes (i.e. the photos from China), that seems to undercut the argument that bikes are a more sustainable solution than other transportation options. And the bigger danger is that the companies offering this new model (Limebike, for example) have no long term model. They've been operating at a loss since inception and will continue to for the foreseeable future. If they replace more sustainable models, then pull the plug because they lose their investment funding, it will set the whole bike share movement back years.
As for just using the discarded bikes in your local co-op, I'm also skeptical. If they're not being used by the bike share company, the assumption is they're damaged. I can't say for certain whether it would be cost effective to repair and repurpose a fleet of bikes that were barely usable in the first place because I haven't had first hand experience with them, but I'm skeptical.
Just my two cents
Clint Watson Executive Director Bicycle Collective www.bicyclecollective.org clint@bicyclecollective.org
*The mission of the Bicycle Collective is to promote cycling as an effective and sustainable form of transportation, recreation, and as a cornerstone of a cleaner, healthier, and safer society. The Collective provides refurbished bicycles and educational programs to the community, focusing on children and lower income households.*
On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 1:40 PM, Katy Collet katy@cyclonordsud.org wrote:
Bonjour,
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