Dockless bike share firm Mobike shuts up shop in Manchester, blames thieves and vandals

andyp wrote:

dockless is mental.

Docked have their drawbacks too - try finding an empty dock in the City after 8am for example - you end up having to go well out of your way to find an empty slot. 

What they need is some kind of hybrid system that encourages you to use docks if they are available, but let's you park elsewhere, and doesn't penalise you for not using a dock if they are full.  Oh and lightweight,  yet bulletproof bikes. 

Solve all that before lunch, then tackle world poverty.  

CygnusX1 wrote:

andyp wrote:

dockless is mental.

Docked have their drawbacks too - try finding an empty dock in the City after 8am for example - you end up having to go well out of your way to find an empty slot. 

What they need is some kind of hybrid system that encourages you to use docks if they are available, but let's you park elsewhere, and doesn't penalise you for not using a dock if they are full.  Oh and lightweight,  yet bulletproof bikes. 

Solve all that before lunch, then tackle world poverty.  

...try being a person with reduced mobility in a place with dockless bikes. They're not 'yours', you don't need to leave them in a specific place - just dump the fecker. Pavement, stairs,  bus stop, wherever. Sod everyone else. If it's your own bike you lock it somewhere sensible, out of the way, because you don't want it damaged or nicked.

Having to walk a bit (for someone who has been cycling) shouldn't really be that big a deal.

Agree that it's the users rather than the docks/lack of docks which are the real problem, but docks mean that non-users are less inconvenienced.

davel wrote:

I think they fooked up the logistics. The writing was on the wall when they reined the boundary in because they couldn't support collection from the suburbs. But the only people I know who had used them, had only used them to get home in the suburbs. Isn't that what they're meant for? Journeys of a few miles? Pulling that boundary in tight to the city centre really dropped it off people's radars - why faff around picking up a mobike for a journey you can walk in 15 mins? They messed the Manchester implementation up and are blaming the scallies.

Central Manchester is compact enough that cars could be banned altogether, it's pretty much car free as it is, but more could be done.

I'm more than happy walking across the centre on business and wouldn't use a bike. Getting out of the city would be a car ride anyway and outside the Mobike range. Apart from data collection, they weren't really feasible in Manchester.

don simon wrote:

Central Manchester is compact enough that cars could be banned altogether, it's pretty much car free as it is, but more could be done.

I'm more than happy walking across the centre on business and wouldn't use a bike. Getting out of the city would be a car ride anyway and outside the Mobike range. Apart from data collection, they weren't really feasible in Manchester.

Not just Manchester.  I (as regulars will know ) am in Bristol.  The central areas of Bristol are, as you can imagine, tiny: much smaller than Manchester, for example.  Absolutely easy walking distance for anyone who has working legs.

The council keeps p!ssing around with the Centre, allegedly to reduce traffic and make it better for non-motorists, every few years (the latest one involves making it better for non-motorists by putting a big new general traffic road slap bang through the middle of it, turning one side into a bus lane / bus stopping with engine idling area, and adding a whole new set of light controlled crossings.

They cannot see that the problem is that the centre of the city is still used as a through-route. when it really shouldn't.

We have a major motorway (M5) going up the west of the city, another (M4) across the north, and an urban motorway (M32) which comes pretty much directly down to the main shopping centres, so there's no need to facilitate commuters coming in from south of the city (North Somerset, via the Clifton Suspension Bridge or the Cumberland Basin) to then drive right through the middle to get to the north.  Motorways were built for cars - bl00dy use them, then!

There's no need for all this fiddling around just so as to not tick off the people who will get in a car to drive from Broadmead to Park Street, for example (google it).

janusz0 wrote:

I've noticed these rather distinctive shaft drive bikes in London too.  Who operates them there?

Mobike are operating in Camden - I occasional see their bikes and some yellow ofos in the City. There are 5 bikeshares in Greater London now, appraently:

http://oobrien.com/2017/11/five-bikeshares-in-london/

Mungecrundle wrote:

Yet again the moronic actions of the few spoil the reputation of a great city.

There is no collective responsibility of fellow Mancunians for the behaviour of the imbeciles, yet the commercial reality is that this company has been forced to remove a service that was valued by many and the city gets another question mark against it in the perceptions of people who might otherwise consider investing or setting up business in the area.

That's a bit over the top. I hardly think that a few bikes, that littered the pavement, being removed is going to have a significant effect to the local economy. I wonder if this is the real reason Man Utd have failed to attract top players... If a bike is good enough Shakira's husband...

Mungecrundle wrote:

Yet again the moronic actions of the few spoil the reputation of a great city.

simonmb wrote:

Fundamentally, the mass of people in today's societies don't have the ability to 'share' without responsibility (in bike-share case, returning to a fixed point). As a mass, 'we' care only for things we possess. I can't see how anyone thought these dockless schemes would ever work. 

Are there global instances of dockless bike-share schemes being a success?

I am doubtful about the schemes anyway.  Not sure, but I kind of think people using their own bikes is going to be the main alternative to driving, with docked bikes filling in the gaps.  These dockless hire schemes seem a bit questionable in their economics even without lots of vandalism or theft.

  There's something parasitical about private schemes clogging up public spaces with vast numbers of undocked bikes (though the space taken up by all those taxi ranks isn't any better!  But at least they are confined to designated spaces).

At least it's not only us lawless Brits who make the schemes fail

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2099293/chinese-bike-sha...

simonmb wrote:

Fundamentally, the mass of people in today's societies don't have the ability to 'share' without responsibility (in bike-share case, returning to a fixed point). As a mass, 'we' care only for things we possess. I can't see how anyone thought these dockless schemes would ever work. 

Are there global instances of dockless bike-share schemes being a success?

Certainly in China they seem to have good takeup, although "success" is hard to judge at this stage.  I recently spent some time in a large city in south-west China, dockless bikes were everywhere and very much in daily use.  I could pay for a bike straight from WeChat without any new apps, they were mostly decent enough bikes (albeit too small for those over 5" 10'), and vandalism, whilst present, didn't seem that common.

Why do I say success is hard to judge?

• There are lots of users, particularly for "final mile" journeys.
• The bike infrastructure in most Chinese cities is pretty well segregated and it feels safer than riding in European cities, however:
• They are very much in the expansion stage, growth rather than profit is king, similar to online shopping in the early days, which means flooding markets with bikes to build market share.
• The problem of excess bikes and bike graveyards are very real, as are piles (yes, literal piles) of bikes in public spaces.
• Consolidation is inevitable and firms are failing, Ofo may be the next to go.

The problems do however appear to be ones of competition and the lack of balance between  corporate plans and civic responsibilities, rather than lack of demand or lack of respect for bikes.  That balance will be found, the market will consolidate, it's very unlikely that the schemes (as a whole) will dissappear.

FlyingPenguin wrote:

simonmb wrote:

Fundamentally, the mass of people in today's societies don't have the ability to 'share' without responsibility (in bike-share case, returning to a fixed point). As a mass, 'we' care only for things we possess. I can't see how anyone thought these dockless schemes would ever work. 

Are there global instances of dockless bike-share schemes being a success?

 

Certainly in China they seem to have good takeup, although "success" is hard to judge at this stage.  I recently spent some time in a large city in south-west China, dockless bikes were everywhere and very much in daily use. 

[snip]

 

• The problem of excess bikes and bike graveyards are very real, as are piles (yes, literal piles) of bikes in public spaces.

Quite how thousands (if not millions) of bikes in graveyards can be considered a success, I have no idea, but the nimber of lost/stolen/damaged ibikes incurred in the UK pales into insignifiance by comparison: 

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2018/may/01/unexpected-beauty...

CygnusX1 wrote:

FlyingPenguin wrote:

simonmb wrote:

Fundamentally, the mass of people in today's societies don't have the ability to 'share' without responsibility (in bike-share case, returning to a fixed point). As a mass, 'we' care only for things we possess. I can't see how anyone thought these dockless schemes would ever work. 

Are there global instances of dockless bike-share schemes being a success?

 

Certainly in China they seem to have good takeup, although "success" is hard to judge at this stage.  I recently spent some time in a large city in south-west China, dockless bikes were everywhere and very much in daily use. 

[snip]

 

• The problem of excess bikes and bike graveyards are very real, as are piles (yes, literal piles) of bikes in public spaces.

Quite how thousands (if not millions) of bikes in graveyards can be considered a success, I have no idea, but the nimber of lost/stolen/damaged ibikes incurred in the UK pales into insignifiance by comparison: 

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2018/may/01/unexpected-beauty...

It's an artefact of the intense competition, a gold rush on two wheels.  The weaker players will fail, the market will correct.  The bikes not removed are being used day in, day out.  The number of bikes involved is so mind-bogglingly large that the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of removals represent a relatively small percentage.

Stand on any main street in a major Chinese city (hilly cities like Chongqing excepted) in the rush hour, you will see a near constant stream of dockless bikes filling the bike lanes both ways that puts London's CS routes to shame.  They have nearly completely replaced private bikes in the centre of many cities and enticed lots of people that didn't used to cycle (such as my, ahem, "not very sporty" relatives) back onto the roads.

In summary:

• More people are cycling
• The bikes are being used day in and day out
• They are affordable by the vast majority of people living in the coverage area
• The percentage vandalism is much lower than Manchester
• The market is likely to see some consolidation after the current growth slows
• And yes, there are some typically Chinese problems (primarily dumping of bikes everywhere) that will either be sorted by the companies, or by local authorities if the companies don't get a handle on it

It's not an unqualified success, but definitely not something to write off entirely....

velochris wrote:

I received my credit yesterday. An excellent scheme that was cost effective to use, convenient and quite fun. Those who spoilt it for the rest should be ashamed. Sadly they will probably laugh about it.

I downloaded the app but never got as far as parting with a deposit. The initial fleet of bikes were too few and so were sparsely distributed - there was never one nearby.  Walk 10 minutes the wrong way for a bike that may not be there when you get there, or walk 5 minutes to the nearest tramstop? Tram wins.    

I did use the ofo bikes in Sheffield a few times (used to cycle to Piccadilly on a clunker, lock it up, get the train and hop on an ofo at the other end) but now take the clunker on the train 

The sheffield  ofo bike have gone now too, I don't think it was down to the loss of my custom though:

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/yellow-scan-and-go-hireable-bikes-to-with...