Lanzhou’s Bike Share Program Opens to Incredible Success (!)…for now.
On June 30, 111 automated stations around the city filled with bright green bikes “opened” for service： Lanzhou’s finally got its own bike share program (公共自行车)! In the first two days alone, 4000 people, most using bus cards or “citizen card” (市民卡) with a deposit of at least 300元, took out bikes, and their popularity has only increased. The majority of stations I pass are empty for the large part of the day, and why wouldn’t they be? The cost is as follows: FREE for the first hour of use, ONE YUAN for 2-3 hours of use, TWO YUAN for 3-4 hours of use. There’s a little over 6元 to a dollar, so without super math skills – using these shiny, brand new bikes is basically free. There are over 1500 bikes available, and the program plans to add up to 500 more, but in case anyone forgot, China has a lot of people.
Several other cities already have public bike share programs in place, including Shanghai, Beijing, Jinan, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Wuxi, Foshan, and Hangzhou (which was the first to implement it), but Lanzhou’s is a bit different: why? Well, for one thing, as this Gansu Daily (每日甘肃) reporter rightly noted, Lanzhou, unlike cities like Hangzhou, basically has zero bike lanes. Considering, as any pedestrian here can tell you, Chinese drivers do NOT stop for people on foot, you better believe they don’t stop for bikes, and bike helmet culture has yet to catch on here. Also: pollution. We’ve talked about Lanzhou pollution here before: granted, the air is often better than Beijing or Shanghai, but it’s still crappy, then throw in the occasional dust storm. And then there’s bike and software maintenance – it’s highly likely one of the reasons so many people are taking bikes out right now is because they’re new and not broken. I’ve seen some BROKEN bikes in China, and I’m doubtful that in a year these bikes won’t be looking pretty similar – the humerous list of damage costs also makes me skeptical, which includes, for example, 100元 for a “misshapen frame” (车架变形)…you’re telling me someone can bend a bike frame in half and only needs to pay 17 dollars to fix it?
So, just imagine using New York's Citi Bikes, except more dangerous, more polluted, and likely more broken.
But seriously, we’ll see what happens in 2-3 years…at least by then the currently under-way Lanzhou subway is supposed to open, so we’ll have some new ways to risk our lives.
