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In June of 2017 a company called oBike started distributing shareable, dock-less bikes around inner-city Melbourne. Inevitably, locals responded by throwing them into rivers and jamming them up trees, which led to their almost universal derision. And now, just one year later, oBike has announced that they're pulling out of Melbourne.The announcement comes just one day before oBike was set to face serious fines. On June 5 new rules from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) came into effect, categorising each abandoned bike as litter, making oBike liable to pay $3,000 per bike. The EPA also demanded that the company present a long-term bike management plan by June 13 (tomorrow) or face fines of $3171.40 for every week the reports weren't submitted.And so rather than creating a strategy to keep their bikes out of trees and waterways, the company will simply close up shop. It will however, continue business in other cities around the country.Nial Finegan, EPA CEO, told Fairfax that the organisation is in no way "anti-oBike," but echoed a commonly held criticism—that the Singaporean-based company began operations without a thorough plan."The experience people had of oBike… was they dumped these bikes and that's led to frustration in the community and the hazard they have created," he told Fairfax reporter Simone Fox Koob. "A little bit of forethought is what we would expect of any reasonable business. They failed to give it any thought."The bikes will be removed over the next few weeks by the City of Melbourne and oBike. City Lord Mayor Sally Capp has recommended that people stop using the bikes in the meantime.And if you want to see what happened when we here at VICE collected up a whole bunch of oBikes and dumped them on the company director's front lawn, you can right here.
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