City swoops on illegally parked bikes, find most belong to sharing start-up

Hong Kong is coming for your bike. Well, at least if it’s illegally parked. And a lot of them are, apparently.

Police were joined by officials from the departments of Lands, Food and Environmental Hygiene and Home Affairs early this morning along with a few district councilors in an operation to fine or confiscate bikes that were illegally parked.

All told, the Lands Department issued 79 warnings to illegal parked bikes, though only 29 were actually removed from the streets in Tin Shui Wai and Yuen Long districts.

Interestingly, few of those confiscated belonged to individual owners — 23 were the property of bike-sharing start-up Gobee.bike.

According to city guidelines, bike owners who have received a warning have three days to move them before they are confiscated.

But that generous three-day buffer period gives bikers little incentive to not simply repeat their actions, Yuen Long district council Lee Yuet-man told Apple Daily.

Lee added that the streets chosen to begin the crackdown are so-called black spots for illegal parking, with bikes sometimes occupying as much as 80% of the road and thereby inconveniencing residents.

Bike-sharing plays a key role in the problem, Lee said, but government shares in the blame, as it offers no clear guidelines on parking to bike-sharing businesses, a relatively new concept in the city.

Gobee.bike, which bills itself as Hong Kong’s first station-less bike-sharing platform, started providing more than 1,000 bikes in the New Territories in April and allows people to rent and drop off bikes around the city by simply scanning a QR code.

But unlike bike-sharing service providers in other countries, it does not provide any docking stations, instead simply telling users to park in any eligible public spots.

That said, while encouraging riders to park in areas designated by the city, it provides no penalties for those who don’t.

Company founder Raphael Cohen told SCMP in May that GPS data show has turned up the company’s bikes in a variety of odd places, from the bottom of the Shing Mun River in Sha Tin, to country parks near the border with Shenzhen, to people’s homes.

Similar stories have emerged in recent months in Singapore, where customers of bike-sharing service “ofo” have seen their bikes abused in a variety of ways, including one being tossed from the 30th floor of an apartment complex.

Cohen said, however, as the scale of business in Hong Kong remains small, there is no need to tighten regulation.

“I don’t think we need regulation. We just need good communication,” he told the newspaper.

Lee, meanwhile, told Apple Daily he has been unsuccessful in attempts to reach Gobee.bike, adding that the onus is on the company to tighten its rules and penalize customers who park illegally.