By Hu Qinruo，High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University

In recent years, the popularity of shared bikes has skyrocketed in China. There are currently 68 bike sharing companies with more than 19.5 million bikes and about 50 million daily uses. The two dominant bike sharing companies are Mobike and ofo.
 
Shared bikes bring a lot of benefits to commuters, especially in the aspect that it helps to cover the short distance between the public transportation stations and people’s homes. Despite their conceivable benefits, the expansion of shared bike is causing problems, with the daily management of them being the most serious one.
 
Inappropriate parking has become a common phenomenon. While many shared bikes are found occupying sidewalks and blocking pedestrian, some are even parked deliberately inside residential areas for users’ own convenience. To better alleviate the problem, shared bikes should be redistributed according to demand density at different time slots.
 
Currently, shared bikes are managed by different companies that employ their  own staff for daily maintenance. Alternatively, the government can recruit a third party responsible for managing shared bikes of all companies. However, the third party does not has the power of law execution. For example, the third party company can not fine those who break the regulations. Plus, the staff would be very busy in peak hours but relatively spare during other time periods.
 
The author proposes to include shared bikes into the urban community grid management(UCGM). The urban area is divided into small regions and municipal managerial staff are assigned to different regions. UCGM not only provides innovative means for local public operations such as government asset management and internal operation efficiency improvement, but also serves as a new channel for government-citizen communication and public service delivery. Shanghai is one of the first cities implementing grid management in China. If management of shared bikes were to be included in the UCGM, the management staff would be in charge of supervision of improper behavior of users, management of parking areas, reallocation of shared bikes, etc. The government could charge bike sharing companies for the implementation of UCGM since they no longer need maintenance staff, leading to reduced total cost. Therefore, we have reason to believe that UCGM could be a promising solution to the problem brought by shared bikes. Of course, it still requires extensive study before implementing the policy.