Nihad Amani
Hyderabad: Thanks to the growing population, IT companies, and improvement in living standards have resulted in more cars and more two-wheelers. To top them all are the massive use of auto-rickshaws. The net result of all this is traffic jams all over the city, particularly during school and office hours.
Innovative ideas find way in crowded atmospheres. The latest in Hyderabad is the “Bike for Hire.”
Now those boys and girls who need to reach their offices either in Hitech City or elsewhere have begun to use Bike for Hire to reach their destinations on time.
To fill the demand for mobility of people on time, entrepreneurs began putting their creative hats. Many of them have reached the conclusion that new companies should be set up with hundreds of bikes that can be used by the commuters on their own or through the help of a rider.
Vogo, Bounce and Tazzo Bikes are three such names.
They rent out scooters for short distances travels. This is quick travel and also inexpensive.
Though after utilising these scooters, riders violate traffic norms by parking their rental vehicles in inopportune spots, which is troublesome for vehicle owners and the surrounding public.
A Bounce executive stated, “We have two such bikes. One operates with a key and the other via a QR code (keyless). We are facing issues with the keyless ones as riders park the bikes as per their own convenience without considering basic traffic and road norms.”
To operate keyless bikes, customers have to enter a QR code on the bike’s keypad which enables it to start. Once the user completes the trip, s/he hits the ‘end trip’ option on the bike. Subsequently, the payment is made online after which the bike gets locked leaving the vehicle available for the next user. The user is charged for the time and distance traveled with the average cost/km being around Rs. 6.
Although the entities supplying these quick, inexpensive commutes are making life easier for riders, the same cannot be said about those for whom this service is in demand.
Amar, a regular digital scooter rental customer points out in the tweet below that since commuters can pick up a bike from anywhere and drop it off anywhere, many just park the bikes on flyovers, main roads and even GHMC garbage bins.
Observing such violations, city resident Piyush Mathur protests, “A number of bikes are parked in no parking areas for days together and no action is taken despite constant complaints.”
DCP (Traffic) Vijay Kumar further elaborated on how problematic such violations are. He states, “Since there is no designated area to park these vehicles, users are parking them randomly at junctions and leaving them. We asked the rental companies to make the necessary arrangements for parking. We tend to lift these bikes from no parking zones and charge them with challans (fine). A number of teenagers go triple and also engage in rash driving. A lot them are charged for not wearing helmets.”
Besides the sheer problematic nature of parking of these vehicles in certain areas, these bikes also get stolen and locals unscrew the vehicle’s parts.
