Hong Kong-based bike-sharing service Gobee is shutting down in France after suffering what the company is calling “mass destruction” of its fleet. Gobee, which had 2,000 bikes in Paris and claimed around 150,000 users across the country, says 3,400 of the company’s bikes have been damaged and more than 1,000 have been stolen, according to The Guardian.
Dockless bike-share service leaves France after ‘mass destruction’ of its fleet
Wrecking bikes has become ‘the new entertainment of underaged individuals,’ the startup says
Wrecking bikes has become ‘the new entertainment of underaged individuals,’ the startup says
Gobee’s troubles are the latest example of the uphill battle for so-called “dockless” bike-sharing. These systems ditch the need to fetch or return a bike at a full dock or rack and instead allow riders to leave the bikes wherever they like. Rather than paying at a kiosk, people are able to unlock the bikes and pay for the ride with a mobile app, and they don’t have to go out of their way to pick it up or drop it off. It’s supposed to make bike-sharing more approachable.
Dockless sharing is supposed to make things easier, but it also makes bikes more vulnerable
One downside is that the bikes are more vulnerable when they’re not locked up in a big bike rack. In turn, dockless bike-sharing has run into its fair share of problems around the world. Representatives for a Singapore-based startup pulled 42 bikes out of a river in Melbourne, Australia, late last year. Others have ended up in trees or simply in the middle of sidewalks and lawns. This has prompted an understandably negative reaction from some citizens whose cities suddenly seem to be drowning in discarded bikes.
And in China, where many of the biggest dockless sharing services originated, the supply of these bikes so greatly overwhelms the demand in some places that companies recently created a pile of surplus bikes the size of a small building. Some of the startups are also experiencing financial turmoil.
Gobee had previously called it quits in Belgium because “vandalism and damage caused to [its] bicycle fleet reached limits that [the company] can no longer overcome.” It has also pulled out of two cities in Northern France. Nevertheless, Paris is left with a few other competing bike-share services, and dockless bike efforts continue to sprout up around the world.
“Over the months of December and January, the mass destruction of our fleet has become the new entertainment of underaged individuals,” the company said in a statement.
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