Ofo bike hire
Price Download the free app, then 50p per 30 minutes, with a daily maximum cap of £5
Where In 250 cities across the world, and counting
Details Ofo.com
The guy who chains his bike up next to mine at work takes no chances. He has a D-lock for both front and back wheels, plus a cable lock that he twists around the frame. Then, in case someone is still tempted, he removes the saddle and puts it in his rucksack. The laugh is, of course, that his bike is probably worth less than the price of the two locks. But he has a point. Up to 400,000 bikes are stolen in the UK every year, and we cyclists are used to living in a state of lockdown. So it comes as a shock to see a bicycle left unguarded and vulnerable, chained to nothing. It’s like seeing a wallet on a table. It’s a mistake. Surely no one would leave it there on purpose.
But they have. In fact, they plan to leave these bikes all over cities around the world. The bike is the Ofo (or oFo – it looks like a person riding a bike) and it’s the first and largest “station-free” cycle-sharing company. Ofo is essentially a “free-range” Boris. You can ride and park it anywhere. You don’t have to hunt for a docking station. The bikes are activated through a free app on your phone. You walk up to the distinctive yellow frame and scan the little solar-powered panel on the rear mudguard. This releases the back wheel and off you go. You’ll be charged 50p per half hour, which is taken straight from your account. When you’ve finished, leave the bike wherever you like, scan it again, and wander off with impunity. If it’s then stolen it’s not your problem.
And, surely, that is exactly what is going to happen to your little yellow bicycle. But – and this is a surprise – it seems we are more civic-minded than you think. To get the hang of the system I went for a ride with Matt Sparkes, Ofo’s man in the UK. “We’ve had very few thefts,” he says. “And riders are remarkably tidy, too. You can leave them anywhere, but users tend to park them up next to other bikes.” What about vandalism? People like to break things just because they can. But Matt says there have been very few incidents. “We had one thrown off a bridge in Cambridge,” he says. Then he adds that in Norwich there hasn’t been a single incident of damage since the scheme began. This could be a new way of ranking British cities, I think: “The Ofo vandalism score”.
The bikes are lightweight, have three gears and built-in lights. There is a chain guard, rack and kick stand. The wheels are solid rubber so you can attack them with a nail gun and still not get a puncture. They are pleasant to ride. Currently there are 11,200 Boris bikes in London, but Ofo hopes to flood London with 10 times that number and extend their use into the suburbs. Ofo will be to cycling what Uber is to taxis.
One of the great strengths of Ofo is that there is no cost for councils as there is no infrastructure involved. There are no docking stations and Ofo itself maintains the bikes and always tries to use local bike repair shops.
The facts are quite astounding. The company was started by five students at Beijing University in 2014 with the aim of tackling the irritating “final mile” challenge in urban areas. Less than four years later, Ofo is operating in more than 250 cities across 20 countries; 200 million users have completed 6 billion journeys. In three months last year alone, Ofo riders notched up 1.2 billion kilometers and on an average day there are 32 million “transactions” around the world.
The scheme assumes we’ve learned to share, that we won’t hide bikes in our flats. But so far, Matt enthuses, we’re getting the hang of it. We can share. Maybe Ofo will teach us all to be nicer citizens. Then on my way home I see a young man run towards a line of parked Ofos. He kicks over the first one which creates a domino effect and they all go down with a clatter. He laughs as he runs off. It seems like we’ve still got a way to go…
Cool kit
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Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @MartinLove166
