Post Original Author: Timothy Lehman
Famous for its scenic beauty, the City of Hangzhou lies in the Yangtze River Delta on the eastern coast of China. The city’s West Lake region is a very popular area for city dwellers and tourists to visit and sight-see. Yet until more recently, Hangzhou had become overpopulated with cars and other motor vehicles, destroying the natural beauty the city had to offer. Every day the city’s streets saw about 460,000 motor vehicles. A decision was needed to be made about City’s street overpopulation problem, and this led the Hangzhou Municipal Government to decide upon a bike sharing system.
Hangzhou’s public bike share system began on May 1, 2008. Starting with thousands of bikes throughout downtown Hangzhou, the program saw immediate success. The initial goal of the system was to solve the “final-kilometer puzzle” (the distance from the public transportation stop to the final destination). Because of this, the city conveniently placed many of the stations close by to public transportation stops. Citizens of Hangzhou, from age 16 to 70 years old, are able to rent and return bicycles with their public transportation card or Hangzhou citizenship card – all it takes is a swipe of the card to unlock the bikes. Tourists interested in renting a bike must put down a deposit of 300 yuan ($44.00 USD). The first hour is free for riders, and users are charged each hour afterwards.
According to the China information website, tourists are the first group to benefit from the system. Why? With the bike sharing system in place tourists are able to travel around the city and the beautiful West Lake area from a new perspective – a bicycle! Liu Zhuo, a tourist from Shanghai, said, “I have traveled to Hangzhou with my family several times before. It was really a headache to find a seat in parking lots in scenic areas. But renting a bicycle has no such problems. We can go wherever we want.”
Citizens of Hangzhou have greatly benefitted from the public bike share system as well. In fact, according to Lu Zhihong, deputy general manager of Hangzhou Public Transportation Corporation, each bicycle was used 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 of 2009. This led the city to add 2,400 bicycles and 11 new service outlets in April of 2009. More recently the city has made plans to add more bikes and stations, a goal of 2,000 stations and 50,000 bicycles – which would make Hangzhou’s public bike share system the largest in the world!
The original project’s goal was to solve the “final-kilometer puzzle,” yet now it seems that the projects goal is far greater than that. Just imagine if every city in the world took similar initiatives…
Source: China Information Website
Tags: Bike Share, china bike share, CityRide, CityRyde, hangzhou
