Bike renters get a bumpy ride

Bike renters complained Thursday that they have difficulty in using the city's new flagship bike rental service, which was fully launched only at the beginning of October.

Bike rental service provider Beijing GoldeNet Communication Technology Company confirmed these problems, but said that the solutions would be too costly for them to bear.

After having used the service for two months, a female renter surnamed Ren claimed that the bikes are often unusable.

Sometimes, the bikes have no seat or have flat tires, or she could not return the bike as the parking detectors did not recognize her public transportation smart card.

"I don't think they are maintaining them very well," she said, suggesting that the rental company should station people at each hiring location in case renters need assistance.

Li Luming, spokesman for the bike rental service of Chaoyang district, said they have no plan to ask for compensation for broken bikes.

Li said that currently only two bike rental stations have monitoring cameras.

"There are over 63 stations in Chaoyang and Dongcheng, and the cost to buy and install monitors at all of them is simply too high," he said.

"Without monitors, identifying who returned a damaged bike will be a mission impossible," said Li.

A repairman, surnamed Lu, said that they must cycle from one rental station to another to spot bikes in need of repair.

"Since the service's original launch in June, we found at least 600 pedals and over 100 bike seats were lost or damaged," Lu said.

The reason some of the locks at parking stations are out of order is because some users do not place the bike correctly in the lock when they return it.

"The upshot is the locks can't detect the transportation card when it's swiped," he said.

Zhu Lijia, a public management professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said that the government should not spend extra money on a bike rental service, since the local demand for bikes is not high enough.

"When the price for a new bike is only hundreds of yuan and the local public transport system is advanced, renting a bike does not seem to be that necessary," he said.