The rapid expansion of shared bicycle companies in China has ended in piles of scrap in major cities. Supply has outstripped demand, and now hundreds of bicycles are left abandoned and stacked in what are known as shared bicycle cemeteries.
Shanghai, Wuhan, Xiamen, and Hangzhou are four Chinese cities where you can find vacant lots that have turned into shared bicycle cemeteries. The rapid growth of bicycle companies promised to revolutionize urban transport to address the traffic and air pollution problems facing the Asian country.
The system works through an app where users pay a deposit to the company, allowing them to use these bicycles, which are located at various points in the cities, and leave them anywhere for someone else to use. This led many users to simply abandon the two-wheeled vehicles on streets, sidewalks, squares, and any other spot they found. The result was an accumulation of bicycles that local government employees had to collect and store in the so-called bicycle cemeteries. Below is a gallery of the main cities in China where you can see the shared bicycle cemeteries.
A gallery of shared bicycle cemeteries
