I think the kind of bike makes a difference. I've had the same bike for almost 5 years. Although I don't get out too much, I ride it regularly from home to my work at a school.

In contrast, I lost 6 bikes between '02 and '07. That was back when e-bikes were not nearly so common (so the market for stolen bikes was stronger) and I needed to learn a few lessons about where not to park my bike. :-)

Excuse my ignorance, If you pay to park your bike or e-bike, a small amount of money, is not the person you pay responsible for the security of the bike? At least on some small level? Would it not help to prevent theft if an "incident" or ma fan were made with this person and the police. Suggest that the bike parking person is maybe working with thieves and profiting. This could have multiple benefits. Next time you park there they might watch your bike more. The police might consider watching the parking person more or tell them to watch your bike more. The police have also been just picking up illegally parked or registered e-bikes from time to time. Personally I dislike walking down the sidewalk and not being able navigate the side walk due to so many bikes and e-bikes parked or chained to every conceivable stationary object or just parked as the operator desires.

Nice sentiment LD. But people behaving responsibly?

Does Kunming have any plans to introduce a public bicycle system? They have one in the city I live in, and although I was skeptical at first it's actually working quite well.

Hangzhou has a very well used and very effective public bike system, about 10x as many bikes as London's

@Haali: good to hear this about Hangzhou, I didn't know this happened anywhere in China. Very good idea, hope it can be sold to the auto industry and its promoters.

sorry to hear that.

yep, here's the wiki article about it en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangzhou_Public_Bicycle

I didn't use it though, as I had my own crappy Walmart bike. Most of the time I just locked it to itself outside wherever I wanted to go, it never got stolen and I never worried about it getting stolen. Hangzhou is a great place for cycling.

There is a kinda public bike system in Kunming. They are lime green bikes.
I have only seen bike stations on DianChi Lu, Yinghai Lu, Guangjing Lu, and I think HaiGeng Park.
I have never seen anyone use these bikes.