The other day while crossing the road near the very posh
offices at Marina Bay Financial Centre (Home of DBS, SCB, IBM…) I saw a very
amusing sight.
A bicycle from one of the bike sharing companies was abandoned,
chain out, with the chain and gear rusting at the junction.
What was even more amusing was the little pink piece of
paper.
It is a notice from the Land Transport Authority, it says:
“Please do not park your bicycle/PAB/PMD here. It is an
offence to park your bicycle/PAB/PMB other than in a designated parking
lot/rack. Your action causes obstruction and/or inconvenience to other path
users.
Please remove your bicycle/PAB/PMD from this location and
place it in a proper parking lot/rack.
Thank you for your…”
I find this very amusing.
- Who was the notice addressed to? The individual who dumped the bicycle, or the owner of the bicycle? These are clearly 2 people/entities (unless the owner of obike did this, which is kind of unlikely, they are on the other side of the road).
- What is the aim of the piece of paper, increase litter? Given that it is unlikely that the person who dropped the bike to rust will pick it up, and that no one else would like to pay for a bike that is less that functional, what does this piece of paper achieve?
I wonder why this one didn’t get the pink piece of paper; it was just lying there in the passage way.
So is this called parking, or is
this called littering? I refer you to paragraph 17 of the environment and
public health act (1):
“17. No
person shall —
(a) deposit,
drop, place or throw any dust, dirt, paper, ash, carcase, refuse, box,
barrel, bale or any other article or thing in any public place
|
“
The above is kind of the only description that might apply; no it is
not swill, or mucus, or food, or motor vehicle whose registration has expired
(hmmm about PMD though, but that’s not my topic). What if I just leave a
backpack where this bicycle was left, would I be littering? Well if the bicycle
wasn’t litter why should my backpack?
There is another little twist I would like to add before I
start talking about elephants.
I was having brunch the other day (yutaio and kopio) when I
came across this corner of the newly renovated playground that has been
reserved as a designated parking lot/rack.
That got me thinking, how much are the companies providing
bike sharing services paying the government for this space? It’s can’t be just
normal corporate taxes, does anyone with ties with the government know? If they
are not renting this space from the government then their costs of business are
lower than they should be (basically being subsidised by the government using
taxpayer funds).
Oh and don’t tell me these are public property, they are not;
an organisation owns them and if profiting when the public uses them.
And this brings me to elephants.
Many years ago, I helped one of my professors write a paper
for a conference about conservation and our paper was about the tragedy of
commons. (yes, economics again (2)). The idea we presented was that one of the
reasons why elephants were being poached at such an alarming pace and nobody
was protecting them as the issue of ownership.
Since elephants are wild, they belong to no one. And no one
has any incentive (except people with conservationist tendencies or who simply
love animals) to protect them. Belonging to no one is akin to belonging to
everyone, and if I don’t take the ivory, someone else will, so I better act
fast.
To make matters worse, some farmers might dislike the
elephants because the pachyderms sometimes destroy their crops (as farmland
gets closer to the ‘wild’).
What we proposed was to give the right to earn tourist
dollars for example from a herd of elephants to some people living in the area where the herd spends a lot of time.
Then the elephant becomes valuable and worth defending.
So what does that have to do with the bikes?
The reason the situation with the bikes is so weird is the
question of ownership. The person who ‘parked’ the bicycle on the patch of
grass does not own the bicycle. The company who owns the bike maintains the
story of “sharing” but does own the bike. However they have ‘sold’ each bike
many times over.
What I mean is that every person who subscribes to the
service pays for the usage (likely puts a deposit from where the usage charges
are deducted), and the bike sharing company has managed to sell the services of 1 bicycle to many
people. But these people only have the rights to a bicycle if they can find one
when they want to avail of that service. As long as they have ‘sold’ the
service from the bike to enough people, and that covers the ‘capital outlay”
then what follows is mostly profit (minus repair, maintenance and running costs
and any fines haha).
In places like Singapore where people tend to be law abiding
(and is small) it is unlikely that you will find a bike graveyard (3) (The colourful objects at the top and bottom of the photo are cranes and heavy lorries):
So does that mean that the tragedy of commons does not
apply? The bicycles do have owners.
But as long as the costs of the bikes have been recouped, then there is no incentive for the owners of the bike sharing companies to take care of them or be responsible for them (especially if fines are paltry). Then the bicycle becomes a truly common property and I am sure we will see more and more rusty bicycles parked indiscriminately. Remember, the bike companies know exactly who left the bicycle exactly where. If they wanted to do something about it they could; it’s just that it’s not worth the effort.
But as long as the costs of the bikes have been recouped, then there is no incentive for the owners of the bike sharing companies to take care of them or be responsible for them (especially if fines are paltry). Then the bicycle becomes a truly common property and I am sure we will see more and more rusty bicycles parked indiscriminately. Remember, the bike companies know exactly who left the bicycle exactly where. If they wanted to do something about it they could; it’s just that it’s not worth the effort.
And if you are wondering what the government is doing about
it, they consider is a ‘disamenity’ (not littering) (4) and said please do not
do this, and sign this Memorandum whereby “Operators will also remove faulty
bicycles within a day. “ and that is a joke because the bicycle in the
picture was there for many days.
So what is the cost? As this article shows (5), “out of the
292 removal notices issued, 62 bicycles ended up being impounded because they
were not removed within half a day of the notice”, I wonder how the notices
were issued, who was made aware of the pink piece of paper and how? Or more
pertinently why use the pink piece of paper? The government seems to let people
believe that GPS technology is so bad that it cannot be used to pin point
whether the bicycle is at a “designated park/rack”… Or are we allowed to place
all sorts of stuff (not candy wrappers, swill, snot…) for half a day anywhere
without any problem?
I just think it is not sharing when one party makes all the
$ and other parties pay for it.
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