Why are people in Melbourne fishing for bikes?
More than 40 bikes were recently pulled from a river in Australia after locals became fed up with them crowding the streets and sidewalks. Bike-sharing company oBike, which launched in Melbourne in June, is a service that allows users to leave the bikes wherever they want, with an app providing the location of available bikes. But the app went awry almost immediately, with the city’s mayor calling the bikes “urban clutter."
The bikes have been thrown into trees and wrapped around light poles, but mostly thrown into the Yarra River. One concerned citizen built a fishing line, and pulled seven bikes from the river.
Bike-sharing has been successful in other large cities, such as London, New York, and Amsterdam, but clearly it isn’t catching on in Melbourne. What exactly is going on down under!?