Wheels come off Wuhan free bicycle hire scheme
Print Edition
A FREE bicycle scheme in central city Wuhan that once attracted a million users is now in a sorry state with broken equipment and closed stands.
Residents in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, accuse the scheme operator of simply being interested in making money and the city government of poor supervision.
The bicycle sharing project began in 2009 and at its peak had 1 million applications for smart cards to use 100,000 bikes located at thousands of rental stands across the city.
But now many stands have closed or been turned into newspaper stalls, while at some still in operation the smart card system doesn’t work.
And even if they do find a working stand, cyclists complain that there are few bikes, and that many are broken.
Locals accuse the government of letting the operator focus on bringing in cash rather than providing a service, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
Under the government project, Wuhan Xinfeida Group secured the contract for downtown.
It received advertising stand space, which it sold for 250 million yuan (US$40.20million), and 50 million yuan in allowances, it was reported.
But Zheng Shiju, vice general manager of Xinfeida, said the company lost 20 million yuan a year due to high maintenance fees and low ad revenues.
“We can’t continue and have no way of dealing with the problems,” he said.
Wuhan authorities said revenues were perfectly adequate.
Xinfeida could earn 46 million yuan a year from ads, an insider said, while other revenue came from renting out stand space and interest from the 300 yuan deposit paid by each of the 800,000 current smart card holders.
An insider said Xinfeida neglected the bike business after gaining the lucrative government contract.
It is said to have invested in real estate and media projects.
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