#shared bicycles

Idiots who used these shared bicycles just dropped them off wherever they liked, leading to clogging up the sidewalk and even obstructing a pedestrian zebra stripe crossing on a street just off Huixin Dongjie in Beijing.

Few things infuriate The Alabama Expat more than shared bikes thoughtlessly left wherever their idiot riders drop them. It doesn’t matter if the bikes block a sidewalk so that pedestrians have to walk in the road - an extremely dangerous proposition, if you know anything about how insane Beijing traffic is - or even spill over a clearly-marked pedestrian street crossing.

Grannies pushing babies in a stroller, elderly people and kids end up walking in the street as cars and scooters and e-bikes whizz by. It’s not a safe situation.

The policy of the commercial bike rental companies that are enjoying the explosion of the vehicles’ popularity is to just leave them wherever the rider wants. And it’s true that companies do have personnel out on the street rounding up errant bikes and taking them off the streets. Also, some neighborhoods have watchdogs who will try to tidy up areas that are blocked by bikes.

But inconsiderate nincompoops fill up the sidewalks the next day and it’s back to square one.

Adding proper space for riders to park their bikes might be one answer, but I don’t know how city officials would do that. Space is tight. One thing is for certain: People who borrow shared bikes need to think and be more conscientious about where they leave the bicycle when they end their ride.

There is simply no way to get through this mess of shared bikes carelessly left on the sidewalk, completely blocking the entrance to the alley next door to China Daily.