What can 'we’ learn? Nothing. 'We’ have no responsibility for stupid elites. The stupid elites will learn nothing either. How could people be naive enough to come up with a stupid idea like these bikes and not expect them to end up in the Yarra, of wherever the are dumped in Melbourne. In Adelaide, they are dropped where people are finished with them. Recently, I drove past the same bike, dumped at a bus stop, every Wednesday, for a month. The few people who can still walk these days must have had to walk in the gutter to get around it, blocking the footpath as it was.

You can't get any sillier than the galahs who came up with the idea. Oh, you can: the council cranks who fell for it.

What you don't OWN! You don't value! And that simple. New York is even more congested, but flatter, which makes Obikes the faster more acceptable option.

Here cyclists don't need to know or indeed observe road rules, ride two and three abreast to become rolling traffic jams and are often rude and very juvenile (one finger salute) road owners!

Who expect the same rights as licence drivers, plying often too narrow byways and highways.

The latter ought to be bike free and for use by licenced divers piloting registered motor vehicles.

That said if the Obikes were replaced with E-bikes and acquired with a substantial deposit and I.D. Check, and returned to a registered E-bike site! Then this initiative may have worked?

Particularly if in conjunction with off-peak rail travel, where E-bikes could be hand carried?
Alan B.

Why do all our planners want to turn our cities into a new Copenhagen, horrible place, full of god damn push bikes, & crappy old buildings.

Or is this push for bikes & those dreadfully wasteful bike lanes, part of a scheme to put us peasants back in our place. The elites are horrified we can aspire to cars & McMansions, & want us back to a bike being the highest form of transport to which we can aspire.

My barber & the adjacent real estate agent were forced to move when the painting of a bike lane in front of 4 shops reduced the angled parking for 7 cars, to just 2 parallel parking spots. Meanwhile even with a high school just 120 metres down the road, only 3 bikes have been seen using the thing in almost 3 years.

Three of the shops remain empty as a testament to the stupidity of green bulldust.

We should not be encouraging them, but banning the damn things from anything more than local residential streets, never again to clutter up major roads, or even byways, paid for & maintained by motorists.

Thank god this bit of stupidity failed.

What can we learn from oBike’s demise?

Simply, that most people don't want to ride bikes.

One of the positive spin-offs in Sydney from the dock-less share bikes, is an increase in cyclists within the inner city. Anecdotally, there are many stories floating around that locals who used these crappy bikes eventually gave up on them and bought their own bikes. Various bike shops have reported an unexpected increase in sales over a 4-month period. Furthermore data presented by Bicycle NSW comparing bike usage in the early months of 2018 with the early months of 2017 showed a 30% increase in the Town Hall area. The frustration of car drivers in the Sydney CBD is understandable as there is just not enough room for all those cars during business hours. Sydney really need a congestion tax such as that imposed in London, or perhaps even ban private cars carrying only one passenger in favour of buses, taxis, Ubers, service vehicles and bikes.

Anybody riding a bike on city roads must have a death wish.