Reddy Go will start in Sydney in July, and Obike and the publicly funded Melbourne Bike Share are operating in Melbourne

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Cycling advocates and transport consultants have warned that Sydney’s first dockless bike-sharing service will need to resolve questions of privacy, safety and public clutter before its planned launch in July.



A number of dockless bike startups, modelled after services that have become extraordinarily popular in Asia, are launching or have recently launched in Australia.

Reddy Go, founded by Sydney resident Donald Tang, will start in Sydney next month, Fairfax Media reported, while the Singaporean company Obike launched in Melbourne last week in competition with the state’s publicly funded Melbourne Bike Share program.

The companies allow users to locate bikes on a smartphone app and leave them wherever their journey ends, instead of returning them to a fixed docking station as in long-established schemes such as those in London and Paris. The bikes are locked and unlocked with a QR code or combination generated by the app.



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Elliot Fishman, the director of transport innovation at the Institute for Sensible Transport, said the scheme was “potentially very attractive” but cyclists should be aware of their user agreements.

“Our concerns are really about privacy – at the moment, if you look at the detailed terms of use that are sometimes included on their websites, they won’t rule out the possibly of tracking people even when they are not using the bike.

“They sometimes say they explicitly reseve the right to sell the data to third parties,” Fishman said.

“The other issue is one of liability. The terms and conditions say the rider has to check the bike’s mechanical faults before they begin their ride. But a lot of riders may not be able to do that; it may not be part of their skill set. They might find themselves riding a bike that isn’t very well-maintained.”

Reddy Go founder Donald Tang told Guardian Australia they had “no plan to sell any data to any third party”, other than potentially sharing riding data with city councils for town planning reasons.

He said the company would provide onsite managers to check bikes for maintenance and that riders would “not be responsible for any faults”.

Obike has not responded to a request for comment.

The institute has provided feasibility reports for the City of Sydney on public bike share schemes, as well as Monash city council and the City of Parramatta.



Reddy Go plans to launch next month with 160 bikes, and hopes to expand to 6,000 within six months, Fairfax reported. Obike similarly aims to have thousands of bikes in Melbourne. Hire in Sydney will cost $1.99 for 30 minutes, and helmets will be provided with each bike.

Katie Bell from Bicycle NSW welcomed the development but said the companies should make sure users understood bike laws and safety requirements.



“It’s a great vision, but there’s a lot of potential hurdles in the way,” she said.

“I hope that part of their app will make sure that users understand how to fit a helmet properly. If you fall off your bike and it’s not attached properly, it may not actually reduce your risk of injury.



“In NSW it is also illegal to ride on the footpath. If users are coming from another state or another country, the company needs to make sure they are advising them of NSW bike laws.”

In China, dockless startups have come under fire for creating footpath congestion and piles of unmaintained bikes.

Eric Mao, marketing manager of China’s public bike share Green Smart Traffic, told the Guardian in March: “You see thousands of bikes parked everywhere around the city and many are not working because nobody takes care of them – the city’s beauty has been destroyed.”



The City of Sydney council has no jurisdiction to allow or disallow bike-share operators, but a spokeswoman told Guardian Australia they would keep an eye on potential clutter. She said the council had written to the NSW premier asking for a statewide plan to manage dockless bike shares.

Fishman also called on the state government to develop a regulatory code.

“Where a dockless bike provider wants to enter a city they should need to address minimum requirements or a regulatory code set out by the government,” he said.

“They are using public spaces so it should be important that they adhere to standards of data-sharing with government, and of digital privacy. It really is an extension of public transport.”

Bell echoed concerns over bicycle maintenance and clutter.



“In China we’ve seen reports of stacks and stacks of bikes left behind, and we don’t want to see anybody given or using a bike that may not be safe. We want to make sure they are delivering a quality bicycle.”

Tang said Reddy Go would work with councils to prevent clutter: “The purpose of sharing bikes is to make people’s life easier and healthier. If there was any conflict with current society background we will definitely look into it.”

A cycling participation survey released this week found 21% of NSW residents felt cycling conditions in their local area had deteriorated – a sharp rise in dissatisfaction from 8% in 2015.

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NSW had the lowest cycling participation rate of any state, with 12.5% of respondents using a bike more than once a week, down from 17% in 2015.

But rates in inner Sydney rose, which Bell said was a testament to the City of Sydney’s commitment to cycling. One in five council residents cycled weekly, up from 14% last year, and well above the national average of 9%.

In Melbourne, the publicly funded Melbourne Bike Share registered 170,000 trips between July 2015 and June 2016. Hire costs $3 a day, but users are charged overtime fees for trips longer than 30 minutes. In the May state budget, the government committed $4.9m to continue the scheme.

While the dockless systems are cheaper, Fishman said users should be wary of hidden costs. Under the Obike model in Melbourne, users are assigned ratings points, which can be deducted for inconsiderate behaviour such as forgetting to lock a bike.

Once a user’s score drops below a certain level, they can be charged more for trips.

“As soon as your points drop to 60, your fees rise astronomically,” Fishman said. “A user could get charged $200 for a 30-minute ride, and that will be deducted straight from your account. We don’t feel it is particularly transparent.”

Reddy Go said it did not charge increased fees.

In China, the company Mobike has provided more than 100,000 bikes across Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou since April last year. Competitor Ofo, founded in 2015 at Peking University, says it has 10 million users across 33 cities.

