SOURCE / ECONOMY
Beijing decides to cap shared bikes at 800,000 in urban districts
By Global Times Published: Apr 14, 2021 05:18 PM
The shared bicycles were discarded at a park in Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province on Saturday. Xinhua reported that Beijing has cleaned up 388,100 shared bikes which had not been properly distributed and had seriously affected the city's tidiness, environment and traffic order. Previously, Beijing capped the number of shared bikes at 1.91 million. However, the city's shared bikes are still in serious surplus. Photo: VCG

The shared bicycles were discarded at a park in Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province on Saturday. Xinhua reported that Beijing has cleaned up 388,100 shared bikes which had not been properly distributed and had seriously affected the city's tidiness, environment and traffic order. Previously, Beijing capped the number of shared bikes at 1.91 million. However, the city's shared bikes are still in serious surplus. Photo: VCG



The number of available shared bikes of three major platforms Meituan, Helloglobal and DiDi Bike in urban districts of Beijing will be restricted to no more than 800,000, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport (BMCT) on Tuesday, which means a stricter regulation of online bike-sharing platforms to improve traffic conditions in the Chinese capital. 

BMCT disclosed a report on the operation of online bike-sharing service in 2020 and the city's plan for 2021 on Tuesday. The currently number of registered shared bikes in Beijing is 844,000, said the report. 

Beijing city will try to restrict the three major bike-sharing platforms' shared bikes to 800,000 in central areas of Beijing in 2021. 

Meituan, Helloglobal and DiDi Bike will be allocated 400,000, 210,000 and 190,000 bikes respectively, according to the report. The report also encouraged platforms to expand their service to the suburban districts.

In 2020, there were 690 million uses of shared bikes in Beijing, which rose 13.4 percent from the previous year.

BMCT noted that the regulation is to improve using experiences, and provide better-quality shared bikes by the platforms. The city has been encouraging commute on shared bikes to cut carbon emissions. 

Other cities have also restricted the number of shared bikes. The number of shared bikes in Xi'an, in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, was capped at 290,000 at the end of 2020. Traffic authorities in Zhengzhou of Central China's Henan Province and Kunming in Southwest Yunnan Province restricted the number of shared bike in their cities to 132,000 and 100,000, respectively, the CCTV reported.