Chinese
bike-sharing company ofo recently announced plans to share its big data platform with 200
Chinese city administration authorities to improve traffic management in the country.
According
to Xinhua
Net, the move aims at helping these 200 Chinese cities to better manage
traffic caused and disturbed by the growth of shared bikes, and acquire
reliable data for planning city transport systems.
The Alibaba-backed
Chinese bike sharing company is the world’s first and largest station-free bike
sharing platform, according to its official
website. The company aims at optimising short-distance travel through
connective, convenient, affordable and clean short-distance travel options.
Now,
the bike sharing company is operating in 20 countries, with more than 10 million
bicycles available to 200 million users around the globe. It has also reached
the milestone of valuation of 1 billion.
Major
Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen and Chengdu will be the first 20
cities to have access to the big data platform of ofo. The city administrative
authorities will be able to track real time information such as the number of
bicycles in use, bicycle parking locations and the distance travelled by users.
With
the sharing of information on the big data platform, authorities and the bike
sharing company are working hand in hand to minimise nuisance caused by shared
bikes to the public. For example, local authorities can track the number of
shared bicycles in a certain area. If the number of shared bicycles exceeds the
capacity limit of a certain area, potential causing blockage in public space, the
city administrative department can contact maintenance personnel of ofo to relocate
some of its shared bicycles to other areas.
In
fact, big data partnerships between the public and private sectors is nothing
new. As previously
reported, ride hailing platform Grab has joined hands with the Malaysian
Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and the World Bank Group in April 2017 to
improve traffic management and road safety.
Another
World Bank global initiative called Open Transport Partnership (OTP) is working
with multiple ride-sharing companies to assist transport agencies in formulating
evidence-based policies to tackle traffic congestion and other road safety
challenges.
Similarly, Uber is also providing anonymised
data to governments and academics through its platform, Uber Movement.
Featured image: Jon Russell / CC BY 2.0
