#Opinion Of The Day

Riding the urban blues away on my shared bike

The beauty of shared bike services is in how they address a ground-up need for connectivity in a low-key way, says the writer.
The beauty of shared bike services is in how they address a ground-up need for connectivity in a low-key way, says the writer. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
The beauty of shared bike services is in how they address a ground-up need for connectivity in a low-key way, says the writer.
Yuen Sin

A new creature has entered my neighbourhood.

Its breed has multiplied fast, colonising public spaces in waves of neon orange and yellow. Some creatures have flashing lights, others come with baskets, and all are linked by an invisible network of GPS technology and bluetooth waves.

I am referring of course to the thousands of bicycles set free in housing estates islandwide - for sharing.

Office workers trundle past me on their metal bodies in the morning. Children careen towards me at night - laughing and sounding bicycle bells with abandon. On weekends, foreign workers rove the neighbourhood on bicycles with bags of shopping dangling precariously from the handlebars, thereby saving on bus fare.

When bike-sharing started in Singapore about a year ago, some turned up their noses at this new sharing economy service and doubted it would last. After all, photos of bikes upended in the middle of a desolate field or abandoned in a storm drain triggered widespread outrage. "That's why Singaporeans can't have nice things," sneered netizens.

But writing here as a car-less commuter who often feels defeated by the merciless crush of people on public transport, I'm all for bike-sharing as it has given commuting a new lease of life and transformed the way I experience my city.

When an MRT tunnel flooded last October and left a stretch of the North-South Line down for almost 21 hours on a weekend, I worried about getting to work on time for Sunday afternoon duty. The MRT took me from Yishun to Ang Mo Kio where we were herded off the train. I was just two stations shy of Braddell, where my office is, but snaking queues had formed at the bus stop where we could catch free bus bridging services.

I ruled out taking a cab as I did not want to pay surge pricing rates. Then I spotted an ofo maintenance team unloading brand new shared bikes right by the bus stop. Gleefully hopping on one, I rode to my workplace in about 15 minutes. As I watched a bus drive past filled with frowning folk packed like sardines, I felt relief that I had found an alternative form of transport.

More recently, I had to get to Seletar jetty for a story on the Orang Seletar - sea nomads who are believed to have sailed in Singapore's waters since the 16th century. Despite the paucity of transport links to the jetty, a shared bike took me from where I live on the edge of Yishun Dam to its other end where the jetty is, all in less than 10 minutes.

I felt uneasy because I had been warned that some of the fishermen who frequent the jetty can be hostile towards strangers. Then I saw a cluster of shared bikes at the entrance and, somehow, that gave me a sense of assurance. Those bikes were like a sign that said people have come and gone and that I, too, was welcome to drop by for a visit.

The beauty of shared bike services is in how they address a ground-up need for connectivity in a low-key way, says the writer. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI

I ended up having a pleasant chat with one of the jetty occupants, and later cycled on at a leisurely pace for about 40 minutes to Jalan Kayu, where I met a friend for dinner. It was a part of Singapore that had never seemed accessible to me before. A shared bike made this unplanned trip convenient. I liked the flexibility of being able to drop the bike anywhere should it start to rain, or if my legs got sore.

As I rode through placid Seletar Aerospace Park, I spotted more clusters of bikes outside industrial buildings, army camps and eateries. It struck me that the beauty of shared bike services is also in how they address a ground-up need for connectivity in a low-key way.

There's no need for grassroots volunteers to come knocking at your door to find out about what amenities are lacking in the neighbourhood, or for your MP to engage in negotiations with the transport authorities, or for complex algorithms in apps like Beeline, which crowdsources private bus services. (Beeline was launched by the authorities to provide a matching service and booking platform for bus services run by private operators.)

These days, I no longer feel aggrieved at being left out of the transport network because all you have to do is get on a shared bike and cycle to the nearest transport node, and that gives commuters like me a newfound sense of agency.

I am reminded of the term psychogeography, which dates back to 1960s Europe and was coined by the counter-culture artistic practice of the Situationist International movement. Psychogeography is defined as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals".

In psychogeography, city dwellers can escape the banalities of everyday life as they move in an urban space. They do so by attuning their senses to the world around them, and making use of playful, inventive strategies to "drift" through the city without getting lost, thereby rediscovering the city and looking at it anew with a sense of wonder and curiosity.

Shared bike services have somehow made it easier for me to make that leap from hopelessness to joy, from apprehension to wonder, and all within seconds.

I hope that people will continue to treasure these shared bikes and treat them kindly , for they have the power to turn us into psychogeographers who, even on the bleakest of days, can escape from feeling like powerless victims and instead, find ways to marvel at urban life.


• #opinionoftheday is a column for younger writers in the newsroom to write about issues that matter to them and their peers.

Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on February 04, 2018, with the headline Riding the urban blues away on my shared bike. Subscribe