Better management needed to improve bike-sharing service

On Thursday, Beijing's transportation management authorities called a halt to new station-less, hire-on-demand "shared" bikes in the city, where some 2.35 million such bikes are being run by 15 companies. Legal Daily commented on Saturday:

The surge in the number of shared bikes has caused parking chaos, as Beijing now has one bike for every 14 residents, a lot more than what a city needs to promote green public transportation. Twelve cities, including four first-tier ones, have suspended new dispatches of shared bikes and, instead, are focusing on keeping the existing ones in order.

In July, the Ministry of Transport said there were nearly 70 bike-sharing operators, with 16 million bikes and more than 130 million registered users, in the country. The ratio of bikes is particularly high in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, posing a serious challenge to urban management.