Yixing's public bicycle service standard promoted in Jiangsu

Public bicycles have become the most common way to get around in Yixing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Yixing's public bicycle service standard has recently been accepted as the model for East China's Jiangsu province. Relevant aspects of the standard will be promoted throughout the province, serving as a reference for other cities.

In order to relieve transportation pressure and speed up the development of green public transport, Yixing spent over 4 million yuan ($631,891) on the public bicycle project in 2012.

So far, the relevant department has designated 135 sites within the city's main urban area, distributed 3,100 bicycles and issued over 167,000 bicycle cards. Yixing's public bicycle service was listed as a provincial service industry standardization pilot project in 2014.

Unlike the cash pledge system implemented in other cities, Yixing adopted an honest points system, encouraging citizens to borrow and return bicycles in an orderly fashion.

Citizens can apply for bicycle cards for free, and each card starts out with 100 points. No points are deducted within the first hour, but one point is deducted for every additional hour. A maximum of 20 points are deducted per day.

Point deductions are cumulative. Once all 100 points are deducted, the owner is no longer allowed to borrow a bicycle.

All sites are supervised by digital facilities. If a site has no available bicycles, the system will issue a warning and the service center will restock the site within one hour.

Tourists visit Yixing Longchi Mountain Park via bicycle. [Photo/WeChat account: yixingfabu2015]

As for the bicycle system's policies on dispatch and information release, Yixing has formulated three standard systems after 3 years of deliberation, among which 94 standards have been adopted by national and industry standard systems.

Yixing will launch the fourth phase of the project in 2018, and expand coverage to suburbs, allowing these areas to enjoy the same conveniences as urban districts.