China focus: Chinese city gets back on its bike

• Source: Xinhua
• [14:07 May 01 2009]
• Comments

For months, particularly weekends, the West Lake is frequented with tourists riding the orange red public bicycles against green trees, a scene by itself. Tourists also show up with the bicycles in streets of downtown areas and shopping quarters.

In addition to helping tourists go sightseeing, public bicycles have gradually become daily traffic tools for many residents like Li Meng.

According to Lu Zhihong, deputy general manager of HPTC, each bicycle was hired for 0.93 times on average each day in the first few months of operation in 2008. The frequency was raised to 3.27 times in February and about 5 times in March. In April, the city added 2,400 bicycles to 11 new service outlets, making the bicycles total 16,000 in 640 service outlets.

Observing the results, the Hangzhou Municipal Government cherishes a greater ambition.

"The public traffic department must work with the city administration and city planning departments to expand the existing scale to 20,000 bicycles in 800 service outlets by early May," said Wang Guoping, the Hangzhou Party Secretary.

"Our ultimate objective with the public bicycle scheme is not to solve the "final-kilometer puzzle", but the last 100 meters for the people boarding our public transport mix of metro, buses, boats, taxis and public bicycles," said Wang.

Under the city's plan, Hanzhou will have 2,000 service outlets to offer 50,000 bicycles for rent by the end of the year. People will find one service outlet every 100 meters downtown.

"Public bicycle outlets will become as popular as public telephone booths along streets. In the future, residents will largely ride bicycles to go shopping in food markets and supermarkets, or to go to the office," said Lu Zhihong.

Those people who neither return bicycles nor report a bicycle loss within 24 hours, will be charged 10 yuan each day compensation from the deposit in the cards, in addition to normal fees that should have been collected. These users and their IC cards will be put on a blacklist of credibility and will lose the right to hire public bicycles for life.

Huang Zhiyao said "As a government-conducted public service, we cannot run the service fully in line with market rules. The government needs to play a role in the process."

But apparently, it will not do to simply rely on funds from the government to maintain bicycles and pay salaries to staff workers. Rents from the use of bicycles are not enough either to support long-term operation.

According to Tao Xuejun, more than 80 percent of the bicycles have been used for free since last May. The rents, about 200,000-300,000 yuan each month, are utterly inadequate compared with about 1.5 million yuan to run the project per month.

"We have found out a way to make money - put adverts on the bicycles and public bicycle service outlets," said Tao.

"As we keep expanding our service outlets, we will have more resources to tap. We are highly likely to balance incomes and expenses in the long run," said Tao.

Besides, Hangzhou is planning to set up a public bicycle technology development company, to protect and promote its technologies from the public bicycle service.

To date, Beijing and Shanghai, together with Zhengzhou, Jinan, Wuhan, Changzhou and Sanya, are also stepping up efforts to build their own public bicycle systems in response to growing energy prices, environment protection requirements and traffic jams.

"Chinese cities are improving their management capacities. Many places have similar conditions to ours to promote the public bicycle service. This creates a good business opportunity for us," said Huang Zhiyao.