THE Shenzhen traffic police authority will unveil measures on the management of shared e-bikes, by referring to the practices in Guangzhou and other cities, to relieve congestion and ensure smooth traffic order.
The shared e-bike program will be piloted in some areas where e-bike restriction rules aren’t implemented or some areas where traffic order is chaotic and plagued with e-bikes.
The shared e-bikes will have central locations for parking and charging. Residents are encouraged to quit using their own e-bikes if their e-bikes are not up to national standards for weight and speed limit, and to use the shared e-bikes for free rides.
At present, major Chinese cities have mainly enacted restrictions and bans to control illegal e-bikes. In Shenzhen, police take differentiated measures based on the specific situation in each district. Police will consider banning e-bikes in Luohu, Futian and Nanshan, where public transportation is developed.
Police will also consider training e-bike riders to enhance their safety awareness and unveil measures to ban the sale of illegal e-bikes, as well as illegal parking and illegally carrying passengers.
Last March, a Beijing-based company put 400 app-based electric bikes into service in Dapeng New Area, one of the areas in Shenzhen that do not restrict e-bikes, in cooperation with the local government.
The pilot was approved by the Shenzhen police authority, since the e-bikes met national standards, to connect the last 3 to 5 kilometers of commutes. Users need to check the app to park their e-bikes in the digitally designated places in residential, working and business areas.
However, when such e-bikes first appeared in Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park in Nanshan District in January last year to meet the demand of users traveling a distance of at least 10 kilometers, the operator was ordered to call back its bikes two days later as the parking issue, as police put it, needed to be addressed comprehensively.
Shenzhen imposed restrictions on e-bikes in April 2012.
In 2017, Shenzhen reported 523 e-bike and motorbike-related accidents that resulted in 94 deaths and 600 injuries. The number of accidents rose by 25 percent, but the fatalities decreased by 37.7 percent. In contrast, injuries rose by 45 percent or 187 people.
In 2017, 320,000 illegal e-bikes and 34,000 motorcycles were confiscated. Authorities also caught a total of 923 violations involving the production, sale and maintenance of illegal e-bikes.