Skip to Content
Streetsblog New York City home
Streetsblog New York City home
Log In
Bicycling

Dockless Bike-Share Is Leading a Stunning Cycling Comeback in China

Maybe bikes will save the planet after all.

According to a report from the Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Innovation Institute, helpfully relayed from the original Chinese by Carlton Reid at BikeBiz, cycling rates have doubled in Chinese cities since the advent of dockless bike-share systems.

There are now about 16 million dockless bike-share bikes in circulation around China, with each used for an average of three trips per day, according to the British Medical Journal.

China already had a strong cultural tradition of bicycling for transportation. Until recently, cycling was the dominant urban transportation mode, and most people are old enough to remember streets full of bike traffic.

After losing ground to motor vehicles for several few years, bicycling in China is clawing back mode share thanks to the dockless bike-share boom. In Shenzhen, the bike-share fleet of 500,000 has replaced "nearly 10 percent of travel by private car," Reid reports.

Buoyed by billions of dollars in venture capital, the companies are blanketing urban territory with their product. While Chinese cities are still figuring out how to deal with the clutter of dockless bike-share and the immense "bicycle graveyards" that pile up, the ubiquity of the new bike-share technology is also one of its distinct advantages.

The bikes are useful because they're everywhere, with fleets that dwarf even the largest that American cities have to offer. They're also affordable, with each trip costing as little as 30 cents. It remains to be seen whether the business model of cheap bikes at low prices is sustainable in the long run, but for now it's clearly having a major effect on the urban transportation systems of the largest nation on Earth.

We're also still learning how well the dockless bike-share model translates to American cities, where car culture is much more deeply ingrained and bike infrastructure remains patchy and sparse.

Here, the city that's farthest along with dockless systems is Seattle, where the city permitted more than 9,000 of the bikes after its earlier attempt at a station-based system fizzled. Usage of the dockless bikes quickly eclipsed Seattle's old system, but the number of trips per bike per day has fallen recently, and remains well below the figure for New York's Citi Bike.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog New York City

Trump DOT Sec. Sean Duffy Is Dead Wrong About New York City’s Bike Lanes

Sean Duffy says he hasn't seen enough data to believe in the benefits of bike lanes. So we put together this cheat sheet to help him out — mostly using information from his own department.

April 25, 2025

Friday Video: Check Out Lorde On a Bike!

The Kiwi singer is on the top of the charts — and in our bike-riding hearts.

April 25, 2025

RELAX: A New City Rule for Private Seating in Public Space Is More of the Same

A proposed new rule governing how much space restaurants can occupy on open streets is hardly controversial, John Surico writes.

April 25, 2025

Friday’s Headlines: Double DOT Incompetence Edition

What this city needs is a place to walk on the Queensboro Bridge ... and for the federal DOT to get out of our way. Plus other news.

April 25, 2025
See all posts