Concerns raised over fate of bike-reliant delivery industry
Electric bikes will be banned on 10 major roads in Beijing beginning next week, just days after a similar controversial ban in South China's Guangdong Province in which over 800 drivers were taken into custody in 10 days.
Beijing's move indicated a nationwide trend that other cities may follow due to safety concerns, an expert said.
Starting next Monday, the ban will be implemented along part of Chang'an Avenue - the city's main thoroughfare - and several streets around Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, the Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.
The Beijing Traffic Management Bureau (BTMB) said the 10 affected streets have heavy traffic, higher accident rates and often lack bicycle lanes.
"The ban is just a start," an official in the BTMB's publicity department told the Global Times on Tuesday, although he denied that Beijing will consider expanding the ban's scope to include other roads.
According to statistics provided by the BTMB, 113 people died and 21,423 were injured in 31,404 traffic accidents caused by electric bikes in Beijing in 2015. Such accidents accounted for 36.7 percent of all traffic accident injuries.
"Other cities with complex road and traffic situations may also introduce similar bans, as safety concerns caused by those vehicles has become a pressing issue in China," Wang Limei, vice president of the China Road Transport Association, told the Global Times.
Xi'an, the capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, launched a similar ban campaign as early as 2006, followed by cities including Haikou in South China's Hainan Province and Wuhan in Central China's Hubei Province.
In late March, a similar ban on electric bikes was implemented in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, sparking controversy and drawing many complaints, especially from food and package delivery companies, which use electric bikes to provide over 80 percent of their services.
Some delivery companies in Shenzhen have complained that they cannot operate until traffic police are off duty, and the move reportedly triggered the resignation of about 1,000 couriers, who feared they would be detained or fined by their employers for failing to complete their workloads.
In Beijing, where over 90 percent of restaurants that offer food delivery services online make deliveries with electric bikes, the ban has given rise to concerns about delivery services among both customers and companies, The Beijing News reported. Baidu Waimai, a food delivery online-to-offline platform, said their couriers will have to ride unmotorized bikes if electric bikes are banned.
