Soon, we’ll bid goodbye to the days when we happily rented bikes from bicycle sharing companies and freely left them in public spaces for others to use after we were done. In an announcement by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) yesterday, the authority said it signed an agreement with all five bike-sharing firms in Singapore, as well as the National Parks Board and all 16 town councils to promote responsible use of these shared bikes.
The reason? Some of us just couldn’t behave like decent humans when given such freedom — numerous incidents of irresponsible parking, bicycle mistreatment and even vandalism surfaced after bike-sharing platforms started to gain popularity in Singapore this year.
So under the agreement, all five bike-sharing companies — GBikes, Mobike, oBike, ofo and SG Bike — will have to implement geo-fencing technology by the end of the year. That means no more haphazardly scattering your rented bikes at godforsaken locations in rivers, up in trees and under bridges.
The system will also alert the firms when their two-wheelers have been parked properly within designated parking zones, and it’ll be their responsibility to remove faulty bicycles within a day and provide public liability insurance for users, noted The Straits Times.
Oh, and this doesn’t just apply to bikes — shared personal mobility devices and power-assisted bicycles are also included in the agreement.
On its part, LTA said that the public can expect to see more than 4,000 yellow bike parking boxes (they can accommodate a total of 20,000 bicycles) at parks, MRT stations, bus interchanges and public housing estates by the end of the year, reported TODAY.
“LTA will continue to take strict enforcement action against indiscriminate parking, and consider stronger regulatory measures if bicycle-sharing operators do not operate responsibly,” the authority declared.
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