Cycling in Shanghai: how shared bikes work, and when not to ride

Shanghai sits on the alluvial plain at the mouth of the Yangtze, with almost no slope; it is also a dozen kilometres across, with heavy traffic. Flatness makes you willing to ride; scale makes riding a matter of judgement.

Two faces of the same city: flat, and vast

One is riding a stretch. A kilometre or two, start and finish in the same few blocks, plane trees, walls, small shops and junctions between: too short to wait for transport, too detailed to walk. This is the best use of a bicycle here.

The other is riding across. From one end of the city to the other, where the point is arrival, not passage: too many junctions, nothing to look at, and it was twenty minutes on the metro. The test: if you would happily take twice as long for the route, ride; if you want it over with, do not.

How shared bikes work

The dockless bikes you unlock with a phone are the practical core of cycling here.

There are bikes everywhere. Outside metro entrances, office towers, residential gates; a street with none is rare.

A phone unlocks them. Scan the frame’s code with the operator’s app or a payment app’s mini-program. The first use needs a registration and a working payment method, and some operators ask for identity verification; terms and foreign-card support differ, so check in the app before you go out, not at the kerb.

They are cheap. Charged per ride or by time, with day passes and discounts. No amounts here, because they change; the app shows the terms.

They must be left in a designated area. The most misunderstood part: no docks, but not anywhere. Park inside the marked bays at the roadside, or where the app’s map permits. Pedestrian streets, sight entrances, the space outside a metro entrance and the inside of residential compounds are usually off limits. End a trip outside the area and it will not close; the meter runs on.

Faulty bikes are common enough to expect. Slack brakes, a flat tyre, a dropped chain, a twisted saddle, a jammed lock. Looking a bike over first is normal, not paranoid; if something is clearly wrong, take the next, which costs thirty seconds.

The rules visitors get wrong

Bicycles are not allowed on the pavement. Pavements belong to people on foot; a bicycle goes in the cycle lane on the carriageway. Wheeling is not riding, and on a pavement you wheel it.

A one-way street applies to bicycles too. A car may not go the wrong way, and neither may you, whatever a local does.

A cycle lane comes in two forms. One is painted on the carriageway, separated from traffic by a white line; the other is physically separated, by railing, planting or a raised kerb. Both are for riding, and neither lets you into the motor lanes.

Do not ride the wrong way down a cycle lane. Not for fifty metres, not when nothing is coming.

Stop at red. Where there is a cyclists’ signal, obey it. At a large junction a left turn often means two stages: straight to the waiting area opposite, then the next phase.

You cannot ride across the river. The tunnels and bridges ban bicycles, and the only everyday crossing with a bike is the ferry, the route set by notice at the pier; the metro will not take a whole bicycle, though a folded, bagged one is luggage.

Enforcement varies by district and hour: busy junctions have auxiliary police, quiet ones are lax. But the rule does not change because nobody is watching, or because locals do it.

Where a bike is worth it, and where it is not

One neighbourhood. Your hotel to the metro, metro to dinner, one sight to the next: a kilometre or so, faster than waiting, street included.

The lanes of the old city. Narrow, full of turns, low on speed, which is a bicycle’s scale.

The plane-tree streets of the former French Concession. Dense grid, canopy joining canopy, several kinds of street within two kilometres: the best cycling in Shanghai, and the route is in the Wukang Road walk.

The edge of a park. Riding along the outer wall beats walking a lap inside; bicycles are not allowed in, and there is parking at the gate.

Instead of two metro stops. When two stations are a kilometre or two apart, the entrance, screening, wait and stairs outweigh the ride.

Stretches of the riverside. Cycle paths run separate from the promenade; which section is open changes, so look at a map first, and see parks and the riverside.

The cases against are as concrete.

Crossing the whole city. Ten kilometres or more turns the bicycle from transport into exertion.

Rain, and a summer afternoon. Most Shanghai rain is drizzle, but wet surfaces are slippery; high summer is not hot so much as close: ten minutes and you are sweating with nowhere to change.

A road with no cycle lane. Main roads, the space beneath elevated roads, tunnel approaches: bicycles squeezed into something narrow, or nothing at all.

Anywhere you would have to park badly. The Bund, East Nanjing Road, the streets around Yu Garden, a mall’s front door: the bays are full or far away.

Luggage, children, a fixed time to be somewhere.

Safety, and what to check, fix and park

What to watch for is not cars but electric scooters: quiet, fast, numerous, riding against the flow, on the pavement, close past your shoulder, through junctions without looking. A car at least makes a noise and obeys the lights.

Junctions and doors. A right-turning car will cut across the lane, the commonest conflict: glance right before pulling away. A parked car will open a door without warning: leave an arm’s width.

Helmets. Shared-bike riders mostly do not wear one, and neither do locals: habit, not proof of safety. On a busy road, or with a child, bring your own; a shared bike has none.

Lights and night. The lamp may be broken, or work only once you are moving; riding unlit after dark is where this gets dangerous, because you can see the road and nobody can see you. Avoid night riding if you can; in rain the white lines and manhole covers are slippery, so brake early. No headphones: at a junction, sound is information.

Before you ride: squeeze both brakes and check they bite and spring back, the check you cannot skip; press the tyres, a soft one is a puncture; check the saddle and clamp; check the chain is not skipping; at night, the lamp; then the basket and the code.

If it breaks mid-ride, push it onto the pavement, end the trip in the app, report the fault, and take another bike or the metro. Do not leave it in the carriageway, and do not ride one whose brakes have failed.

Where you may not leave it: outside the marked bays, on tactile paving, in a fire lane, outside a metro entrance, in front of a shop, inside a compound or park, on a pedestrian street. If someone with a pram or wheelchair would have to go round it, it is not a place to leave a bike.

What happens if you leave it badly: the trip will not close and the meter keeps running; some operators charge a relocation fee, set out in the app; your account may be restricted; the bike may be cleared away. If no compliant spot is in sight, use the app’s map, or ride back to the last bay.

Who it suits, one ride worth making, one to skip

It suits anyone staying in the plane-tree districts, the old city or by the riverside; anyone with a gap in the day who wants streets rather than sights; anyone covering a kilometre or two who does not want to wait.

Skip it if you are here two days with a full schedule, if you are with children or older companions, or if riding in traffic is not for you.

The ride worth making. The Hengfu area: from the junction at the Wukang Building, south along Wukang Road to the Fuxing West Road area, then east along Middle Fuxing Road to finish near Sinan Mansions. Two or three kilometres of small streets and plane trees, junctions frequent but traffic slow, and you can stop where you like; the direction is from the busiest corner towards the quiet streets, and back to the metro.

The ride to skip. Anything over three kilometres whose purpose is to save one metro journey, typically from People’s Square to the Bund and on to Lujiazui, or from the centre out to Hongqiao. It looks like a shortcut and turns out to be a main road, a line of red lights and a search for parking.

One sentence. In Shanghai a bicycle is feet, not a vehicle.