Southeast China's Nanjing has joined a growing number of other cities to ban the use of unlicensed shared bikes.
Authorities in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, banned unlicensed bike sharing businesses in a statement issued Monday, citing safety and regulatory concerns.
Officials with the department added that many of the city's electric bikes were unlicensed, and their users often violated traffic rules.
According to statistics, as of the end of December last year, 317,000 shared bicycles in Nanjing had been licensed in accordance with the regulations. These vehicles were from Ofo, Mobike and Haro respectively, and the remaining unlicensed bicycles will be banned from riding on the streets.
Illegally parked shared bicycles affecting the traffic order should be cleared by the urban management department in a unified way, and all shared bikes that are not registered should be busted. For companies that do not come to claim an unlicensed vehicle, a three-month notice will be issued and the bikes will be auctioned or destroyed if no one will claim them after the expiration date.
Chinese cities including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou and Xi'an have issued guidelines to halt unlicensed shared bikes, in an effort to regulate the booming bike-sharing industry.
China now has around 70 bike-sharing brands, with more than 16 million bicycles on the streets nationwide and 130 million users, according to the Ministry of Transport.
