Do you have those rent-a-bikes in your city or town?

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In my home town the university has moved to the city center so the council has stepped up the number of the pay per use push bike stations. The bikes are very ugly and distinctive to stop people stealing them and people do use them. Sadly there are not that many placed around the town so people do pinch one or two whilst others are thrown in the canal. Its not exactly a money maker. In Manchester, England's second biggest city, a Chinese company, Mobike, set up a bike share with over 1000 bikes available. problem is the bikes are quite trendy and so desirable and so people 'borrowed them' with little intention to give them back. Its 50p per half hour to hire them and the idea is to leave them anywhere for the next person to use them as they have GPS , located through the Mobike app. In the first year 2000 of the bikes were trashed by users, many believed to be at the bottom of the Manchester Ship Canal. Every month this summer 10% of the bikes have gone missing. The Chinese people running the company have now threatened to pull out as they are losing money, the main problem with the green economy. These schemes need lots of public subsidy to generate profits for private investors as humans simply cant be trusted. I China they had huge problems with bike share. There are enormous mountains of unused bikes in the big cities because too many firms were given a permit to operate in the city and so in competition. The photography of these bike mountains is quite beautiful.