We know there’s a war between the shared bicycle schemes in Shanghai. I have counted 8 companies but apparently there are many more. The pavements and roads have become choked with (predominantly) the yellow Ofo and the original orange Mobike. However, recently I have noticed that people have been going around damaging them, removing wheels, inner tubes and chains. The skeletons of these bikes are left along the road side with Fuxing Lu being a popular graveyard.
I took the opportunity of the Qing Ming break to go on my own bike across the river to Pudong on the ferry, cycle along the Huangpu and then return via the International Ferry Terminal. The roads were a sea of orange and yellow. Crowds of brightly coloured bikes wait at traffic lights, and row upon row wait patiently on the pavement to be hired. 
Most of the bikes are used by young and youngish people but increasingly I see peoplpe going about their business on them. Specifically builders in their hard hats and estate agent boys cycling to properties on them with clients in tow. Just off FangBang Lu I saw a father teaching his very small boy to ride using an Ofo bike. This child could not have been more than 6 – the bike was far too big for him and it was a struggle for him just to reach the pedals. At the same time, an older (but not much) girl was practicing her riding skills on the same quiet side road.
In my experience, there seem to be a lot more Ofo bikes than Mobike these days. I know that Mobike planned to have 100,000 bikes in the city so you can only guess how many Ofo have – has to be considerably more. I must admit to jumping ship from Mobike to Ofo because the seat can be extended for taller people and the tires are not solid, so making it a much more comfortable ride. The deposit is also a lot cheaper and I have yet to spend any money to ride them.
However, the big bonus which Mobike has is the basket on the Lite version. It’s almost worth pedalling with your knees under your chin not to have to dangle your shopping off the handle bars. The base of the baskets have a solar panel which is used to power (I assume not being a physicist) the GPS. However, increasingly the baskets are being used to carry human traffic. It is not unusual to see children sitting in them.
There is an army of workers going round the city tidying up these bikes and I met a couple of young men working
for Ofo by Suzhou Creek, lining up the bikes two-deep along the pavement. However, I also saw a massive pile of abandoned bikes at the Cool Docks on the same day. It is getting very difficult these days to find somewhere to park a bike. Signs have started oppping up asking people not to park their shared bikes in certain places to allow people to use the pavement.
Shared bikes are in theory a great idea but really how many do we need? There are already too many and it seems every month another company comes along and dumps thousands more on our already cluttered pavements. However they are popular and if kids are using them to learn to ride a bike and to exercise then that can only be a good thing. The government is bringing in legislation to control the use of these bikes, including a minimum age and maintenance levels.
I would like to see fewer companies operating these bikes – maye 2 or 3 and for the local government to licence companies. I wonder how many shared bikes per head of population there are in Shanghai today.