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Consider common standard for bicycle-sharing schemes

Owing to the current lack of interoperability, a proposal for a unified e-payment system was submitted recently (Razer submits e-payment proposal to Government; Sept 8).

The writer says SG Bike’s geofencing trial appears to be a solution to indiscriminate parking by users. Photo: Najeer Yusof

The writer says SG Bike’s geofencing trial appears to be a solution to indiscriminate parking by users. Photo: Najeer Yusof

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Cheang Peng Wah

Owing to the current lack of interoperability, a proposal for a unified e-payment system was submitted recently (Razer submits e-payment proposal to Government; Sept 8).

The same problem applies to bicycle sharing.

Time and money as well as manpower in enforcement would be wasted if the authorities stay in the background instead of actively designing a desired outcome.

SG Bike’s geofencing trial appears to be a solution to indiscriminate parking by shared-bike users (4th bike-sharing operator targets indiscriminate parking with technology; Aug 25).

So it would be confusing for users to know of another operator, ofo, that has concurrently set up 25 parking zones in the city centre and western area of Singapore, without geofencing.

A common standard would catapult bike-sharing schemes to success, saving all stakeholders from wastages.

In Chinese cities, their authorities’ current thinking is to regulate shared-bike parking in areas of heavy human traffic and to make a list of places in residential, industrial and recreational areas where shared-bike parking is forbidden.

The rationale is simple: It is odd for users to spend 80 seconds locating a bike-sharing zone and then park there, say, 800m away, before walking to their final destination another 880m away.

It also defies cost-effectiveness to geofence many zones in many possible residential, industrial and recreational areas where users might wander.

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