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22 Mar 2024

Rob Brown, co-director of Dalby Forest Cycle Hub, a not-for-profit hire scheme has been nominated for the Tourism Superstar 2024 award, run by VisitEngland.

21 Mar 2024

ACS (The Association of Convenience Stores) and the Federation of Independent Retailers (The Fed) have both welcomed a new report published by the Association of Police and Crime...

21 Mar 2024

As reported by Healthstores UK, new data contained in the 2024 Soil Association Organic Market report shows that independent retailers delivered an impressive 10% growth in 2023, with...

21 Mar 2024

An independent bottle shop and bar in Cheltenham has been named as the UK's Independent Beer and Wine Retailer of the Year 2024 at the Drinks Retailing Awards. 

21 Mar 2024

A number of organisations, including Bira (the British Independent Retailers’ Association), other trade associations, BIDs and unions have met with officials from the Welsh Government to...

21 Mar 2024

The British Independent Retailers’ Association (Bira) has reacted to data released by PwC and the Local Data Company exploring the state of the UK retail landscape.

8 Mar 2024

Daniel Blackham, editor of industry magazine BikeBiz, has been writing about his experience of completing the Cytech technical one qualification at training provider Spokes People in Milton...

6 Mar 2024

Cytech partner Activate Cycle Academy, the largest and most recognised training provider of bike maintenance and technical training courses to the UK’s cycle industry, recently welcomed a...

6 Mar 2024

The Greeting Card Association has reacted to a BBC Panorama programme lifting the lid on Royal Mail management prioritising parcel delivery over letters, which it says are in contradiction of...

4 Mar 2024

Pop star Kate Bush has been announced as an ambassador for this year's Record Store Day, on 20 April.

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China's bike sharing boom generates 70,000 new jobs

Posted on in Cycles News

China's national English language newspaper the People's Daily reports China's flourishing bike share sector generated the equivalent of 1% of all the new jobs in China.

Bike share chinaAccording to the Employment Research Report of the Bicycle-Sharing Industry by the State Information Centre of China, the new recruits are working as bicycle-sharing employees and bicycle manufacturing workers, as well as maintenance staff and logisticians. In the first half of 2017, newly created jobs in the industry reached nearly 70,000.

Over the past year, several Chinese startups have deployed tens of millions of bikes in cities across the country that can be rented cheaply on a smartphone. The low cost and flexibility is attracting tens of millions of rides every day, as people look for alternatives in China's traffic-clogged cities.

As of June 2017, China had 106 million shared bicycle users making nearly 50 million journeys every day. The report also said that around 16 million shared bicycles were on the streets of China by the end of July.

Earlier this year China's State Council praised the growth of bike share, with Premier Li Keqiang commenting "We should give credit to the sharing economy as a reinvigorating force in China's economic growth."

However, with such huge growth, some of the biggest Chinese cities are now trying to curb public hazards by banning new bikes to the popular schemes.

In a statement, the Municipal Transportation Commission also said it would begin efforts to clean up parking.
Bikes in big cities are often abandoned, thrown haphazardly on streets and kerbs.

It said the Commission would look at regulating shared bike schemes, including guidelines for parking spaces.
In most cases, bikes are fitted with a GPS chip, allowing users to locate a bike. They pay for the hire with their smartphones and then unlock it - sometimes using a QR code.

Once they have finished the journey, customers can leave the bike anywhere.

That has led to some problems in cities, and Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan are among the places that have enforced bans on new share bikes.

Earlier this week, state media reported that the number of shared bikes in Wuhan's urban districts was approaching 700,000, far exceeding the city's capacity of 400,000.

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