 |
| A woman rents a bicycle in Beijing. Rental stations allow customers to rent a bike in one spot and leave it in another. Sun Jun/ChinaFotoPress/ZUMA Press |
Return to the bike? Hard sell in Beijing
As Beijing marks car-free day for the first time, an entrepreneur pushes citywide rental scheme.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 21, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 2
Beijing - Few cities on earth are in such dire need of a solution to their traffic problems as Beijing. Drivers here are so accustomed to choking on exhaust fumes, stuck for hours in tailbacks that they scarcely even complain.
So the Beijing city council's decision to join this year's World Carfree Day for the first time would seem to be a cause for rejoicing.
Don't cheer too loudly, though. The centerpiece of the authorities' plan for Saturday is to temporarily ban private cars from two stretches of downtown street, each about 250 yards long. That's 0.003 per cent of Beijing's roads.
It is not exactly the courageous blow for a livable city that Wang Yong, an energetic bicycle enthusiast and entrepreneur, had hoped for. But Mr. Wang has his own plan to tame Beijing's streets and perhaps make some money, too.
The Beijing Bicycle Rental Co., Mr. Wang admits, is a bit of a David in the face of the capital's Goliath-like traffic monster. But he has high hopes that as Beijingers' frustration levels rise, the seductive charms and status of driving an automobile will seem less tempting, and that they will return to the bicycles they have deserted by the millions in recent years.
"We Chinese have a special feeling for bicycles, and cars have brought catastrophic damage to our society and our environment," Wang says. "Every civilized citizen has to be aware … that we have to bring bikes back into our daily lives."
His business is simple: customers pick up a bike at one of the company's rental stations – a straightforward model adapted to Beijing's sometimes bumpy streets – leave a 400 yuan ($53) credit-card deposit, and whiz away. When they are finished, they drop the bike off at another station and get their deposit back.
The service costs 5 yuan ($0.66) an hour, 20 yuan ($2.66) a day, or 100 yuan ($13.33) for a year-long VIP card. "The longer you rent, the cheaper it gets," Wang says, "because we want to encourage people to use a green mode of transportation for longer. I see this as a public-service business."
The company is still in its infancy, funded by the profits Wang makes from his three restaurants. It has set up only 31 rental points around central Beijing so far, offering 500 bikes. But Wang envisions 200 rental stations and 50,000 bikes by the end of 2008, achieving an economy of scale that he thinks will make the business work.
He is focusing on subway stations, hoping that customers will find his rental spots convenient enough to ditch their cars and take up biking at either end of a metro ride.
RSS feed
