For more than half a year, Mr. Tran Minh Quang (22 years old, Tay Ho district) has chosen public bicycles as a means of transportation to go for a walk, sightsee or exercise every day. “It only takes about 5 minutes to walk from my house to the nearest public bicycle station, so every morning I take my bike to exercise. I find the cost of using this bicycle very affordable, suitable for my income, so I registered for a monthly ticket,” Mr. Quang shared.
According to Lao Dong Newspaper, although they are installed in crowded places such as flower gardens, parks, and schools, many public bicycle stations are still deserted, deserted, and rarely used. A typical example is the bicycle station on Hoang Cau Street (Dong Da District, Hanoi), where there are nearly 20 neatly arranged bicycles with no one using them. Bicycle stations on Lang Street are also in a similar situation.
According to Tri Nam Group, after more than a year of piloting (from August 24, 2023 to present), the group has deployed more than 700 bicycles at 88 locations in 6 districts. To date, this service has attracted more than 208,000 registered customers, with an average of nearly 700 new registrations per day. Nearly 340,000 trips have been made since the pilot, with an average of more than 1,100 trips per day.
Although the use of sidewalks is free for the pilot, the public bicycle service has not yet been profitable. The investment cost for the pilot is more than 6.4 billion VND, but the revenue so far has only reached 3.7 billion VND.
According to Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thuy - former Director of the Transport Publishing House, an expert in urban transport research, piloting public bicycles is a good solution. However, public bicycle services have not yet attracted people to use them for many different reasons. Firstly, the traffic infrastructure is not yet qualified to meet the demand, many roads and lanes dedicated to bicycles are still limited, causing people to not widely use this means of transport.
The second reason comes from people's travel habits. Third, the current procedures and processes for using public bicycle services are barriers for the elderly, because everything is resolved online.
To help public bicycle services attract more users in the future, Mr. Thuy said that it is necessary to study routes that are qualified to build more dedicated bicycle lanes, helping people to travel more conveniently. Next, the organizing unit needs to increase the coverage network of public bicycle stations and the number of bicycles at each station should be arranged reasonably and sufficiently. Finally, the procedures for service users should be shortened and simplified to suit many different subjects.
