Singapore is one of the few nation which goes in the front league when comes to implementing new technologies or trying new things. This story is one among that.
Few years back Singapore implemented bicycle sharing system. In which public can rent a cycle on minute basis and park anywhere in the city through mobile app. Then whoever needs can take it from there. This sharing system has several benefits. In long run it will make the people more active. For short distances people can prefer bicycle which is carbon free over any other mode of transport . No one needs to have the bicycle, to do cycling.
Singapore Transport Authority issued licenses to few companies to run the service. As this looks very attractive, people particularly young adults showed much interest in the beginning . Later Singapore govt. allowed few more companies to run the service to make the sector more competitive and to infuse more cycles to the city. Within a year we were able to see cycles everywhere around the city.
But it created few problems.
First, the cycles were parked everywhere instead of dedicated facilities. Initially govt might have thought it will not be an major issue as it is just bicycle not like any other motorized vehicle which occupies extra public space.
Second, the cycles looks brand new and attractive in the beginning. Later it became very dull old cycles because of not regular maintenance and birds droppings. These kind of issues made it less attractive compare to the beginning. As the number of cycles are very high, companies look into cycles only when it is not functioning. Slowly these kind of abandoned cycles getting increased. We could see cycles everywhere. On the road side, under every apartment, on the parks, almost everywhere in the public space. If you stand anywhere in the city and look around, there will be abandoned cycles.
How to streamline this? Government get involved. They instructed the companies to implement dedicated parking facilities approach through mobile app QR code system. By which whenever a person rent out a cycle he or she has to park in the dedicated parking slots. This has to be ensured via the mobile app by scanning the QR code placed on the parking slots (Refer the image on the right). Govt worked with the companies and provide space to implement this approach. Later this reduced the cycle parking issue drastically.
But the other issue remains. The cycles are not much attractive like the beginning. The public transport is well connected through out the island even for less than a km bus services are there. Another new challenge arise because of the dedicated parking facility. People have to rent and park on dedicated parking slots. All these reasons leads to less or no usage. So everywhere now we are able to see cycles. But this time mainly in parking slots. This doesn’t look good for a city which is named for its cleanness and perfection. What to do again?
Again govt interrupted, worked with bicycle companies and enforced them to remove all those abandoned cycles from public spaces. Few companies implemented it. For the companies which can’t comply govt revoked their license to operate. It worked. Now only minimum no of cycles are there around the city and it is properly managed.
That’s all. This is the short summary of the story.
This clearly tells us one thing. Fail Fast, Learn Faster. We should not worry about trying new things. We have to try new things. Correct the mistakes. Improve it. At certain point if it is not working make the hard decision. In the next beginning use the lessons learnt and implement it.
This is one of the reason why Singapore still shines!!!!
