Vienna seizes schemes’ bicycles in crackdown on competition
Authorities have seized 780 bicycles in a week as Austria effectively bans schemes that include Chinese operator Ofo and Singapore’s oBike
Vienna — City authorities in the Austrian capital declared victory on Tuesday in their clampdown on dockless bicycle-sharing schemes, which they said were cluttering up public spaces. Under new regulations that came into force on August 1, and which effectively ban such schemes, 780 bicycles had been seized, authorities said, representing virtually all such bikes in the city. Chinese operator Ofo and Singaporean company oBike launched bike-sharing schemes in 2017 that used smartphone apps to run the service instead of the docking stations used in more established schemes. Vienna has its own publicly operated Citybike system, with 1,500 bikes available at 121 terminals in the city. The ability to park oBike and Ofo’s bikes anywhere was a convenience for users, but city authorities complained they were becoming a nuisance in public spaces and operators were not repairing vandalised bikes quickly enough. Initially, both schemes met with success in Vienna, with Ofo’s fleet at one point ...
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