Hangzhou, known as “China’s best tourist city,” is striving to become “the world’s largest city with free public bicycles.”
With 50,000 public bicycles and 2,000 rental stations, by the end of this year, they will completely “cover all residential areas, large shopping malls, and supermarkets.” The government even plans to build dedicated bicycle lanes on elevated roads.
Where’s the paradise amid all this traffic?
This initiative, which began during the “Labor Day” holiday in 2008, was initially just an emergency experiment.
At that time, there were many individually operated bicycle rentals around West Lake, each running their own business. Frequent complaints about poor service quality led the Hangzhou municipal government to hope to bring order through “unification.” Zhang Fumin, general manager of the Hangzhou Public Bicycle Transportation Service Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the “Public Bicycle Company”), recalled—
In April 2008, under the leadership of the Hangzhou municipal government, the Hangzhou Public Transport Group and the Hangzhou Public Transport Advertising Company jointly invested 5 million yuan to establish the state-owned “Public Bicycle Company,” dedicated to experimenting with public bicycles.
The initial steps were tentative. When the trial operation began on May 1, 2008, we only set up 61 bicycle rental stations and deployed 2,800 bicycles. The service points were mainly located in scenic areas, “where the scenery is beautiful, suitable for cycling, and also a major area for traffic congestion.”
At first, people were slow to respond. “It wasn’t until the National Day holiday that year that we barely expanded to 5,000 bicycles, with only about 14,000 users per day.”
The initially complicated rental procedures and high failure rate scared some people away. Zhang Fumin admitted, “Renting, returning, paying deposits, getting refunds… the rental process involved over ten steps, and people often got frustrated before even getting a bike.”
Even worse, bicycle breakdowns were frequent. “At that time, the rental success rate was less than 50%.”
Afterward, the Public Bicycle Company quickly upgraded the rental system and simplified many procedures. For example, previously, to rent a bike, you had to swipe your card at the POS machine at the rental station to pay a deposit; when returning the bike, you had to swipe again to get the deposit back. After the upgrade, the POS machines were built into the bike racks, so whether picking up or returning a bike, you only needed to swipe at the rack.
Additionally, in response to public complaints, the bicycle company extended service hours, set up multiple 24-hour rental stations, and even introduced bicycles with child seats. To address the difficulty of renting and returning bikes during morning rush hour, they installed video surveillance at every station and monitored traffic flow in real-time at headquarters to make timely adjustments.
The refinement of details sparked public interest, and the results soared. By the National Day holiday in 2009, Hangzhou had set up 1,600 rental stations and deployed 40,000 bicycles, with daily usage exceeding 150,000 trips.
Drivers trapped in traffic jams soon noticed the benefits of free bicycles. During peak hours, “watching everyone stuck in their cars, unable to move for ages, while I pedaled my bike along the tree-lined path, whistling all the way,” wrote a local netizen on their blog.
Free usage is the most important reason for the popularity of public bicycles. As long as you return the bike within one hour, there’s no charge. “Sometimes, when users are about to exceed the time limit, they’ll return the bike at a nearby station and rent it again to extend the free period.”
An even more surprising outcome is that “in nearly a year of operation, theft has been rare, and minor human-caused damage is only 0.5%.” said Zhang Fumin. This may be due to the advanced anti-theft facilities and video surveillance put in place from the beginning. “When we studied the Paris bicycle system, we found their damage and theft rates were very high, so we strengthened our precautions from the start.” For example, designers chose bright red and orange-red for the bicycles “to clearly distinguish them from regular bikes.”
In addition, a strict credit management mechanism has also been a key factor in the smooth implementation of the public bicycle system.
The public bicycle management policy states that anyone who violates the rules by keeping bikes for extended periods will, in addition to being charged according to the standard rates, also incur a daily compensation fee of 10 yuan, and their case will be reported to the police. The offender and their IC card will also be added to a credit blacklist, permanently banning them from using public bicycles.
Who’s Lifeline Is It?
Nowadays, statistics show that over 90% of Hangzhou’s public bicycle users are local residents or long-term migrant workers, while international and domestic tourists make up less than 10%.
Compared to the original goal of simply standardizing services in scenic areas, this turned out to be a happy accident. Authorities found that this experiment seamlessly connected slow traffic with public transit, proving to be the key to alleviating the city’s chronic traffic issues.
Like many other large Chinese cities, after a decade of unbridled growth in real estate and private cars, Hangzhou’s urban traffic has nearly ground to a halt. As of the end of September 2009, the number of motor vehicles in Hangzhou exceeded 1.5 million, meaning one car for every five people. Even more alarming, this rapidly expanding figure continues to grow by several thousand vehicles per month.
“Hangzhou’s ‘difficulty in traveling’ and ‘difficulty in parking’ are no less severe than those in Beijing and Shanghai,” said a representative from the Hangzhou Transportation Bureau. To tackle traffic congestion, Hangzhou has tried everything: building more and more roads, making them increasingly complex—from the “Three Exits and Five Roads,” to the “One Vertical and Three Horizontal,” to the “Five Vertical and Six Horizontal,” and then the “Two Ring Roads, Three Vertical and Five Horizontal.” The costs have run into the hundreds of billions.
When land wasn’t enough, Hangzhou even turned its attention to its vast network of waterways, dredging the water system and launching “water buses.”
Supporting regulatory measures have also been continuously updated: implementing one-way traffic on several major roads; setting up guidance systems on key elevated roads; creating left-turn waiting zones at qualified intersections; and pioneering straight-through waiting zones nationwide.
But these hardware or software improvements have been like a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 50,000 new motor vehicles added each year. In 2006, desperate Hangzhou even considered researching a “congestion charge,” which drew widespread criticism.
No one expected that the ultimate lifeline might turn out to be the once-dismissed and unsightly bicycle, abandoned by urbanization.
Previously, to improve the city’s image, local officials had massively phased out “the four small vehicles” such as pedal tricycles and motorcycles. And with every road renovation, “more space was given to motor vehicle lanes, while bicycles, once made to give way to cars, were squeezed onto sidewalks.”
But now, on the "two ring roads, three longitudinal roads, and five transverse roads" road network that basically lacks non-motorized vehicle lanes after completion, Hangzhou Party Secretary Wang Guoping is calling for a rethinking of bicycle accessibility—"bicycle lanes and pedestrian paths can be combined, but if that’s not possible, bicycle lanes must absolutely be guaranteed." Wang also proposed considering dedicated bike lanes even on overpasses, "otherwise, it’s very troublesome to ride public bikes across the river."
Zhang Fumin said that according to Hangzhou’s plan, public bikes will subsequently "spread everywhere like telephones," and beyond addressing the practical need to alleviate urban traffic congestion, the unexpected deeper significance of green commuting has also been discovered. Statistics shown by Zhang indicate that the share of public bike trips in Hangzhou’s total public transportation volume has approached 4%, and their role in energy conservation and emission reduction should not be underestimated.
Free on one side, business on the other
"We may not have the world’s No. 1 this or that, but this can be considered our world’s No. 1," Zhang Fumin quoted Hangzhou Party Secretary Wang Guoping as saying playfully.
Since 2008, officials from Wuhan, Hainan, Ningbo, Suzhou, Shanghai, and other places have successively come to Hangzhou for inspection and consultation on the project. Meanwhile, small island city Zhoushan and Jiangyin in Wuxi have directly requested that Hangzhou provide a complete set of bike systems to be replicated locally.
"We have many patented technologies. For this, we established a Public Bicycle Technology Service Co., Ltd. to export these technologies." Clearly, this is a very good business, but Tao Xuejun, deputy general manager of the Public Bicycle Company, said that Hangzhou’s success may not be so easily replicated.
Public bicycle services first require adequate financial support. In Hangzhou, the monthly rental income of two to thirty thousand yuan is negligible compared to the monthly expenses of about 1.5 million yuan for vehicle maintenance, depreciation, staff salaries, and other costs.
Precisely for this reason, in the early stages of the experiment, the government wavered among various ideas such as "tendering for operation, government-led, or bus company operation," and ultimately chose the government-led approach.
"Early on, a domestic advertising company once proposed to contract the operation, but the city ultimately rejected it." Zhang Fumin believes the reason was, "We studied Paris, where the bike operation is managed by a French advertising company. After covering the initial investment, they only cared about collecting fees. They had little enthusiasm for maintaining or updating the bikes, and the damage rate of bikes in Paris was very high."
And long-term, large-scale investment is clearly not something a single company can afford. Zhang gave an example: now they need nearly 80 million yuan in operating costs almost every year, and all the funds are self-raised by the company. But as a government-led initiative, Hangzhou is providing them with substantial interest-free loans. And perhaps only a fiscal powerhouse like Hangzhou can bear this.
How can free services be sustained indefinitely? Public services also need to improve economic efficiency, Zhang Fumin said, and they are striving to achieve a break-even point in operations.
Where does the money actually come from? Zhang Fumin’s plan is to develop the resources at public bike service points. By leasing and developing service booths and billboards at each service point, as well as placing advertisements on the bikes themselves, certain revenues can be generated. As the number of service points continues to grow, the available resources will become increasingly abundant, and in the long run, it is entirely possible to achieve a balance between income and expenditure.
The Public Bicycle Company seems optimistic. On October 16, the advertising spaces for public bikes were auctioned on a large scale for the first time, with starting bids set at a high level of 10 million yuan. Zhang Fumin believes "such pricing is reasonable. With 50,000 bikes and 10 million yuan worth of ad spaces, that’s only 200 yuan per bike per year, and the foot traffic is in the hundreds of thousands or even millions."
"Perhaps not everyone sees this market potential, but we remain optimistic about the future," Zhang Fumin said. Reported by Lü Minghe, Southern Weekly.
■ Reference Material
International Experience with Public Bicycles
The public bicycle system first emerged in the 1960s in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. Today, various operational models have been developed in different countries and cities. In Copenhagen, Denmark, anyone can open a public bike by inserting a 20-kroner coin and return the coin after use; in London, UK, users obtain the bike unlock and lock codes by sending a text message. The public-private partnership model based on a membership system in Paris, France, is currently one of the more popular approaches.
In July 2007, JCDecaux Group (a top international outdoor media company), launched the "Vélib’" (free bike) service in Paris. In return, the company was allowed to place advertisements on the bikes and in selected areas of the city. Currently, the Paris metropolitan area has nearly 1,500 docking stations and more than 20,000 bikes.
Users can pay 29 euros to register for an annual card, or purchase short-term rental cards at self-service machines. The first half-hour of rental is free, with fees increasing incrementally after that.
The self-service machines at docking stations display information in eight languages (including Chinese), providing not only usage instructions and rental services but also user account top-ups. The machine system operates 24/7. Users can also return bikes at any docking station. If a station is full, users can simply swipe their rental card again to gain an additional 15 minutes of free time to find another station.
Of course, since its launch, Paris’s service has faced issues with theft and vandalism. As of February this year, more than 7,800 bikes have been lost cumulatively, and nearly 12,000 have been damaged.