Locations
An Ofo bike parked outside the UNDP China office, Beijing
(Originally published on 05/23/17)
By Patrick Haverman - Bike sharing runs in the family. My brother is the inventor of bike sharing in the Netherlands, and in the 1990s he started a system where at most of the train stations you could rent a bike for 23 hours at relatively low costs to get from the station to your destination and back. The system is popularly known as ‘The Last Mile.’
When I first arrived at UNDP China, I was determined to follow in the footsteps of my brother, and soon with the office we introduced a bicycle-share scheme. First a quick prototype and later scaled up to 30 bikes for all UN agencies in China, donated by Giant Bikes. The bikes are free to use for meetings and staff can even use them to go for lunch, encouraging healthy habits and a low-carbon lifestyle.
The world is moving at an astonishing pace, with new ideas and innovations appearing every day. While there are currently around 1.2bn petroleum-emitting vehicles on the world’s roads, in September 2016, Beijing witnessed a sudden explosion of bicycles, with thousands of colorful bikes covering the streets and hutongs in orange and yellow. The yellow bikes, rolled out by ofo, a start-up company, have a QR code on the lock of the bike linked the Internet. By simply scanning this code using the ofo phone app, you can open any bike in the city and use it for 1 RMB ($0.15) per hour. It is expected that by the end of 2017, somewhere between eight to 10 million of these Internet bikes should be on the streets of Chinese cities. Katie Melua would be proud!
As always, if we see something new, we try to find out what it is and see how the UN could cooperate to support innovation and at the same time alternative transportation. Thus, right before the Spring Festival, we met with ofo. The benefits bike-sharing are diverse: it encourages people to use less cars for relatively short journeys, reducing vehicle emissions, and at the same time is also a great way to promote healthy living. In addition, the ’open access’ aspect of the platform gives a feeling of community, sharing and looking after property together, away from the individualistic thinking of “ownership”. In my opinion, one of the best innovations for humanity in 2016!
Last month at our headquarters in New York, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced a new partnership with ofo, working together to raise awareness about climate change. Ofo is now one of the world’s largest bike sharing platforms, and the partnership will mobilize support for innovative projects that address urban environmental challenges around the world. They are also planning to work with UNDP in the future on redistributing bikes to more rural areas to improve access to education for children living in poverty. This all combined with a monthly day, the 17th, in support of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Bike-sharing on a greater scale will hopefully bring a stronger sense of community to our cities. Sharing and caring for jointly or publicly owned property can act as a stimulus for breaking social barriers. This shared sense of responsibility will also be essential for promoting collective action to fight climate change and address urban environmental challenges, key to achieving the SDGs.
We only live one life and have one planet, therefore we have the responsibility to choose a socially equitable lifestyle where we should learn to share and care, instead of buying, consuming and discarding. Bike sharing is a perfect example of how you can do this, and with the current speed of development these bikes will be soon available in a place near you! Happy biking.
