Graveyard: China’s failed share-cycle scheme from above

Graveyard: China’s failed share-cycle scheme from above

BEIJING: Handlebars tight in snaking rows of color, thousands of abandoned bicycles line an open field outside the city of Shenyang, relics of a shared bike mania that has overwhelmed China's cities. The turquoise, blue and yellow bicycles, arranged in long lines, some piled on top of each other, bear the logos of the companies that dominate China's bike-sharing sector - Hellobike, Didi and Meituan.

Low cost-shared bikes, which users can unlock using apps and park virtually anywhere, burst onto Chinese streets in the middle of the last decade with investors rushing to fund bike startups like the now-defunct Ofo and Mobike. But the two-wheelers soon took over pavements and spilled over into bike lanes and streets, parked haphazardly by users who sometimes simply tossed the bikes into shrubbery, creating a headache for urban authorities and pedestrians.

Many bikes suffered damage or were stolen, while some were even repurposed into makeshift barricades when Covid-19 broke out last year. The problem is a familiar one to cities around the world battling to round up stray bikes, from metro stations in Washington DC to the bottom of Melbourne's river.

Aerial photographs from the suburbs of Shenyang, Liaoning province, show a bicycle graveyard, one of many