Digital Trends reported that bike-sharing startup Gobee just quit France after the mass destruction of its fleet.
Its decision to exit Paris comes just over a month after it ended operations in the French cities of Lille and Reims, and also the Belgian capital, Brussels, where Gobee said up to 90 percent of its bikes had been stolen or damaged. The company no longer has any schemes operating in Europe.
What does a society require in order for people to have a greater sense of communal goodwill?
When I was back in Singapore last December, I saw many bikes that were randomly abandoned without consideration for pedestrians and road users. Individuals were more concerned about their own convenience than the next person who would use the bike.
It is a stark contrast to what I see in Shenzhen where the bikes are parked in an orderly manner at designated areas. Sure, there were the odd bikes that were stopped elsewhere but these were also parked at where people would leave their electric bikes, so they weren’t a nuisance to other road users.
In a blog post (translated), Gobee said that destroying the bikes had apparently become “the new hobby of individuals, mostly minors, encouraged by content widely distributed and shared on social networks.”
This case in France is more drastic because the bikes were removed from the public pool by selfish individuals, either for personal use or by damaging the bikes.
Do you witness similar incidents for bike sharing where you live? Or are people there more civic-minded?
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