I thought China's version was incredibly interesting, although yes I agree it's a pain when they're blocking your path (and there's so many of them that it is actually a problem).

For anyone that hasn't been to China: the bike share bikes don't have a docking area. People can park them wherever they finish with them. They have a little lock on the frame that stops the back wheel from moving until you scan a QR code on the bike with an app, then it unlocks.

Given the huge bike theft problem where I'm from (London) I don't think that system would work because thieves would just pick the bike up, put it in a van, and break the lock later. It probably happens in China too, but apparently not enough to deter the companies from doing it that way.

We have a huge bike theft problem in Berlin too, but we also have the Chinese style bike share without docking stations.

It works because the bikes have very different frames compared to normal bikes, are easily recognised and therefore worth little to nothing on the black market.

Vandalism is a much bigger problem than theft. I haven't heard of theft of these bikes being a problem at all.

That's interesting. Maybe it's a perceived fear of them being stolen, rather than something based on evidence (well I mean they are a target of theft already and sent to other parts of the UK and central/eastern Europe, but docking them might not be much of a deterrent).

FWIW I've also seen bike sharing systems in smaller cities in China (Guilin, Suzhou) that do use docking systems. Could be because those cities are tourist destinations.

In Bristol, UK they recently started a bike sharing system that didn't require docking but had issues with theft and vandalism so they had to change plan and introduce fixed parking spots. They even cancelled the service in part of the city.

The early bike sharing ventures all used docking stations, then things just got out of control.

That system has just been launched in Manchester [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/29/chinese...

We have bike sharing in Paris. The first year bike thefts were high. But these bikes are distinctive, heavy, and custom. Once the knucklehead thieves realized these bikes were worthless public bike thefts went down.

If you have them on the scale they seem to in China the motivation to steel them would probably disappear.

Or maybe not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40351409

Same thing in Berlin. Until 9 months ago there were primarely bikes by Deutsche Bahn, which had to picked up and dropped of at fixed stations, and everthibg was fined. Then in cooperation with LIDL they introduced new bikes which are not bound to stations and placed them intitially everywhere in the middle of parks, and are now dropped off at the most inconvenient places.

I haven't seen any bike pile-ups as in China, and it's unlikely to happen in any event because these bikes just cost too much–they're build extremely sturdy. They also have GPS so it's quite easy to enforce rules about acceptable placement. What's more of a problem with a free-floating system is asymmetric use: people take public transport to get somewhere, but because it's late, or they're slightly drunk and in a good mood, or have more time than in the morning, they take a bike back home. That's what suck the initially free-floating system by "Deutsche Bahn".

IF you're talking about bikes being left in the way of pedestrians, I haven't experienced it, and I'm sure you could get people to think a bit more if needed.

In any case it's magnitudes less of an inconvenience as that currently created by cars. Considering that about 2/3 of people in central Berlin don't own a car, there's really no reason not to compare the status quo with city almost free of cars. It would be drastically different, as you could reasonably double the space available for the public: eliminate two lanes of parked cars, and make most streets one-way. Most traffic lights could be eliminated, biking speed would double without waiting for cars and red lights. There'd be space for almost anything, from small gardens to sports, right in front of your house.

But now I am able to use them. Previously I lived too far from any station and now I usually can find a bike near me. Or just go back home without going through a station. The bike then stand near my home at most 24h.

Other thing is that there is also NextBike alongside Lidl-Bike and that is a bit unfortunate.

Simple fix for that, charge for them till they are returned. Even $0.50 to $1.00 is likely enough to result in them being returned quickly, even if it's not the original borrower.

London did this, basically bikes were ending up at the bottom of hills as people either ride them down or stopped before cycling up the hill. They introduced a rebate fee for leaving it at the top of a hill (certain areas) and they had fewer bikes to move manually and a better distribution of bikes around the city.

Do you have a source for this? I've never seen anything about rebates.

Same in Paris.

Yes if some journeys had a negative rental cost then you could solve the availability problems quite easily.

it's because they don't have docking stations and failed to integrate GPS on the bikes to locate them. Also the many copycats mean that all of the sudden there was just too many bikes from many concurrent companies for the market.

chinese bike share companies are VC scam, they dont care what happens to the bikes, they are after the investors.