What’s the most exciting new technology for transportation? Well, there are plenty of candidates; the self-driving cars, drones big enough to carry people, Elon Musk’s Bore Hyperloop Tunnels. The future looks to be merging with Science Fiction when it comes to moving around people.
All these technologies look very interesting but there is one form of transportation that has been around more 100 years and it has the potential to be the future of transportation. It’s the bicycle.
Dockless Smart Bikes have the potential to be the future of transportation. Sharing bikes on the go it’s a big trend started in China but soon progressed on to Europe, Australia, the USA and Canada.
How does this system work?
You download an app on your mobile device. You use it to track any available bicycles near you for rent. Once you find one, you walk up to it. You pay using your phone and the bicycle unlocks.
Then you ride the bike all the way to wherever you want. You park it, lock it and then leave it there. Someone else in need of transportation can then pick the bike up and repeat the same procedure. It’s simple, it’s cheap, it’s convenient and it’s super environment-friendly.
This concept was tried back in the ’60s but failed because no one could track where the bicycles went. There were no easy tracking systems back then. Now, with the help of GPS, Bluetooth, RFID, and mobile-payment systems we are ahead of the game. Bike sharing has unlocked a ton of American and global interest in navigating cities on a bike. In the USA alone, usage has grown from 320,000 rides in 2010 to 28 million in 2016. In China, the trend has grown even faster. Especially in the cities where gridlock is infamous, such as Beijing and Shanghai.
Looking at all these super exciting usage data and considering the fact that modern cities are becoming smarter every day; we can easily say that this trend will go up. Driven by the rise in urbanization, smart cities are set to alter our perceptions of society as technology and big data turn cities into a more efficient and livable environment. Bikes will definitely be a part of smart cities and it will shape the future of transportation.
Posted on June 11, 2018 by Ahmet Kul