How to solve the ‘last mile’ problem caused by the relatively short distance between home and subway station?
This question has puzzled people in China for a long time. As there are dramatic increases in the Chinese population and cost of living as well as growth in convenient public transportation system, more and more people choose to go to work by subway and bus. However, compared with private car, the realistic issue people face is that the nearest bus or subway station is not usually next to the house, so people sometimes need to go back home on foot for approximately half a kilometer after getting off from the last station.This is not only costs extra time but also causes trouble in torrid heat and other extreme weather.
Obviously, Chinese people are trying hard to find out effective solutions to cope with this. Sharebike is such a brilliant idea that successfully addresses it. Let’s first look at the concept of Sharebike in China. Sufficient Sharebikes are placed next to the station in advance by the bike company. After people get off at the station, they immediately ride bikes to their destination using their mobile phones to unlock the bike.Then, the bike company sometimes would bring a certain amount of bikes collected from different places back to place where lots of people use it everyday. Certainly,beside the station, bikes are available in many other places, whether the hospital or supermarket, even the park. People can always use special app through GPS to locate the nearest bike around them.
Undeniably, the most unique point about Sharebikes is that there is no restriction as to place People can place bikes near their destination wherever they want except on the road. For instance, if you intend to enter a store, you could just place and lock the bike next to it instead of finding a specific area and walk long way back to store. It is undoubtedly saves valuable time.
Besides, the Sharebike combines advanced technology and provides people with simple procedures to unlock and pay . You can just use a mobile to scan a unique QR code on the bike– the takes less than 5 seconds — then you can ride it away. And after you reach your destination, you just use your hand to turn off the lock then walk away. The payment is based on how much time passes from unlocking your Sharebike to re-locking it. Electronic payments are then automatically transferred to the bike company in a few seconds by a reliable third party online paying company.
Also, more and more bike companies such as Mobike decided to cancel deposits, resulting in more convenience for customers. These combined benefits are attractive to different groups of people, especially for children and old people due to the simple process and safety paying guarantee. Also important with Sharebike is the encouragement for low-carbon travel. Cars always produce greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuel which is harmful to the environment while bikes generate nothing. Sharebike is a good substitute for the car for short distance travel. People‘s awareness for protecting the environment could be enhanced by introducing another way of traveling.
Sharebike has positively affected people, bringing society improvement in efficiency of transportation. One of the top universities in China –Beijing University — has about 2,000 Sharebikes on campus.They save time and money for students who do not need to buy a personal bike as the campus is big. Also,many other schools are also trying to purchase Sharebike to benefit both students and faculty.
Those instances indicate the effectiveness of Sharebikes to solve transportation issues. Meanwhile, the Sharebike companies are trying hard to bring more advantages to customers and make a more perfect bike-sharing system as well as popularize it in the rest of world. If every country could introduce it to the local infrastructure or university, the way people travel may experience a revolution.