On Aug. 18, Shanghai’s municipal transportation bureau sent a notice to a number of bike-sharing companies demanding they refrain from adding more new bikes (link in Chinese) on the streets. According to the bureau, the city has 1.5 million sharing bikes on its streets—about one for every 16 residents. The government also demanded that the companies aggressively relocate bikes parked and scattered carelessly across the city—the services let customers return bikes anywhere, rather than only in designated racks.
Neither Ofo nor Mobike—the biggest bike-sharing companies in China— responded in time to Quartz’s request for comments. But in an interview this week with China’s Hubei Television, Ofo said it was addressing the problem in Shanghai.
“This month Ofo has dispatched 80 extra carts [to relocate bikes], and we have a total of 2,500 operations staff working on cleanup and repairs,” said Hu Yun, chief of Ofo’s operations in Shanghai. “We are proactively cooperating with the government’s calls to clean up the city.”