With rapid industrialization many mega-cities in the world are faced with serious traffic problems. Traffic snarls, delays, congestion on roads, carbon emitting vehicles, and hassles for people who commute daily. Carpooling has not worked in many situations. Many startups in China started bike-sharing business in China, especially big cities in the last year or so. This is a unique cheap way of commuting, saves time, is convenient and able to cope with traffic congestion and minimizes carbon footprint. Besides, physical exercise is healthy for people of all ages.
By the end of July, 70 bike-sharing companies had put a total of 16million new bikes in China, according to the Chinese Ministry of Transport. Having sprung only in the past year China’s bike-sharing boom took off. But now “China’s market for bike sharing is saturated,” said Zhang Yi, chief executive of iMedia, a Guangzhou-based internet consulting company. In fact, excess capacity has resulted with economies of scale and new curbs have now limited the number of bikes the companies can place in the Chinese cities. The ban is hence forcing well-known companies like Ofo and Mobike to venture abroad to foreign countries with densely populated cities.
Ofo, a major company, due to saturated market at home has so far entered eight countries outside China – Singapore, the UK, the US, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Austria and Japan. It aims to deploy 20 million bikes in 20 countries worldwide by the end of the year.
City traffic planners in China have some reservations on the unchecked deployment. Like issues of over-deployment, cases of vandalism, abandoning bikes on roads and sidewalks thereby obstructing traffic flow have been pointed out. While some critics talk of decline in civic sense, the positive feature is that many civic- minded volunteer groups are trying to plug the problem. Any innovation hurts some traditional means of transport and interests: the frustration expressed by taxi and transporter owners is evident. Transgressions by bike companies have been pointed out by local media in Western cities such as New York, Dallas and Manchester.
But needless to say, bikes with GPS and digitized locks are a creative innovation in China that Silicon Valley can only dream. Now city governments are tightening rules and regulations by allocating special parking areas, imposing fines for misconduct such as theft and vandalism, educational programmes and building cycling infrastructure.
Moreover, surveillance and civic-minded voluntary groups are monitoring these transgressions; The ‘Bike hunters’, say mutual trust is growing and loopholes are being plugged. Once the system is in place and enforced, things fall in right place. Moreover, monitoring and incentivizing good behavior by award of point system are being instituted.
According to them, human nature is intrinsically good and when cultivated, incentivized and proper procedures set in place and implemented – things can drastically improve. The experiment of bike sharing needs to be replicated in other many Asian cities where traffic congestion, pollution and road transport systems are poor.
China has done remarkably well as it has built infrastructure of storied roads and highways. It is doing the same in infrastructure building in other countries to improve communication and connectivity. The bike-sharing initiative attests to efforts in mitigating the traffic woes. As Middle Kingdom, it invented four things: gunpowder, paper, printing and compass. It is trying novel ideas and ‘innovative disruption’ to find indigenous solutions to its problems.
Any new idea or experiment brings in its wake some teething problems and resistance but with proper planning, rules and system regulations the dividends can far outweigh the initial difficulties. Globally speaking, the bike-sharing industry is still in its early stage. Many Asian countries in South Asia with density of population can adopt and adapt this experiment according to their peculiar conditions.
As a reminder, when industrialization started and many inventions were made in the West the Luddites broke and damaged machines in Britain; and in early 1990s computers in many countries seemed a threat to traditional office workers, and looked at askance. But once advantages of technology became apparent they were readily accepted and are now commonplace.
Dr Maqsudul Hassan Nuri, "Mitigating traffic problems: China’s experiment," Business Recorder. 2017-09-17.
Keywords:
Science and technology
, Infrastructure
, Transport
, Pollution
, Communication
, China
, US
, UK
, GPS
