Figure 4 Grab Rail Model 1: Fill & Download for Free

Depends on your definition.The idea of wagonways was invented in the 16th century in Germany, and the concept had spread to England by the 1560s, when one was constructed at Caldbeck in Cumbria. A wagonway involved minecarts running on wooden rails, which kept them going straight and prevented the heavy carts from sinking into the ground. The carts were unpowered; they were moved by attaching a rope and pulling them along. Sometimes animals pushing a treadmill attached to the cable would be used to haul a cart up an incline.In 1758, colliery owner Charles Brandling built a mile-long (1540 metres) wagonway to bring coal from his mines at Middleton in Yorkshire to the city of Leeds. The coal wagons were pulled by horses. The Middleton Railway is noteworthy because it's the oldest continuously-operating railway in the world. (Though it's now a heritage railway run by volunteers.)The Middleton Railway in 1814 (after the invention of steam trains)Iron rails began to replace wooden ones in the 1760s. At first there were two different concepts: plate-rails which were L-shaped while the wagons had flat wheels; and edge-rails, which were flat while the wagon wheels had a flange. Modern railways follow the edge-rail idea, but 'plateways', which used the L-shaped plate-rails, were more common in the early days.The first plateway to be built using iron rails was at Sheffield Park Colliery, in Yorkshire, in 1787. A cost benefit analysis showed that the new iron plateway saved 30% in transport costs compared to the older system, so the idea was quickly copied throughout Britain.The first railway using iron edge-rails opened two years later in 1789. This connected the terminus of the new Charnwood Forest Canal to Loughborough in Leicestershire, and was built because the terrain was too hilly to make continuing the canal itself to Loughborough cost-effective.In 1798 the Lake Lock Rail Road opened in Wakefield -- yet another Yorkshire railway. It ran for three miles (4.8 km) from a cluster of coal mines at Outwood to connect to the Aire & Calder Navigation Canal at Lake Lock. It used edge-rails, and the trains consisted of three wagons in line pulled by a horse. What distinguished this railway from earlier ones is that previous railways were all private operations: the Lake Lock Rail Road was a public railway. The company was floated in 1796 by a share offering, and anybody could transport their goods along the line, at a cost of six pence per ton. By 1807 the railway was transporting 110,000 tons of goods per year, though traffic later declined and the company went out of business in 1836.The Lake Lock Rail RoadIn 1799 the Middleton Railway replaced its wooden rails by the new iron rails, using the edge-rail system.Another important early railway was the Surrey Iron Railway opened in 1803, and constructed at a cost of £60,000. This was nine miles long (14 km) connecting Wandsworth to Croydon. It was a double-track plateway, using horse-drawn wagons to transport coal, building materials and agricultural products. Like the Lake Lock Rail Road it was a public company, and anyone could haul their goods on the tracks if they paid the tolls. The railway closed in 1846, but some sections of its route are still in use today by Croydon's Tramlink service.The Surrey Iron Railway at CoulsdonAfter iron rails, the next major advance was the introduction of steam power rather than horses to propel the trains. Steam engines had been in use in England since the early 18th century to pump water out of mines, but they were large, immobile and inefficient. In 1769 the Scottish inventor James Watt patented a far more efficient and powerful design of steam engine, and in 1775 he went into partnership with the English engineer and entrepreneur Matthew Boulton to produce and sell them commercially.In 1784 William Murdoch, an employee of Boulton and Watt, constructed a small (30 cm tall) working model of a steam-powered vehicle. Visitors to his house reported seeing it "run around Murdoch's living room". (It's currently on display in the Birmingham Science Museum.) Murdoch hoped to go on to build a full-size version, but there is no concrete evidence that he ever did so. (There is an apocryphal story of him building a full-size steam carriage during the 1790s and driving it down the road, and terrifying a local clergyman who thought that the fiery machine billowing smoke was the Devil. Sadly, there's no proof this actually happened.)Murdoch’s steam-powered model vehicleThe first full-size steam locomotive that we know of for certain was built by the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick. Trevithick once lived next door to Wiliam Murdoch, so it's likely there was some inspiration there. His breakthrough was in the use of high-pressure steam, allowing for more compact engines. In 1801, while living in Camborne in Cornwall, Trevithick built a steam-powered road vehicle, which he called Puffing Devil. On 24 December 1801 his locomotive successfully carried six passengers on a journey from Camborne to nearby Beacon. Unfortunately, three days later the vehicle accidentally caught fire, while its crew was eating a late Christmas dinner in a nearby pub, and was destroyed.Undeterred, Trevithick built several more experimental steam locomotives over the following few years. One of these may have been made for the Coalbrookdale company in 1802, but little is known about it (we only have a drawing and a letter), not even whether it ever actually became operational. Another, however, was definitely made for the Pen-y-Darren ironworks at Merthyr Tydfil in Glamorgan, also in 1802. This was a stationary steam engine used to power machinery, but Trevithick, with the encouragement of the ironwork's owner, Samuel Homfray, later mounted it on wheels as an experiment.Homfray then placed a bet of £525 with another ironmaster that Trevithick's steam locomotive could pull a load of 10 tons of iron all along an existing 10-mile long plateway (which was normally used by horsedrawn carriages). On 21 February 1804 Trevithick's locomotive won the bet for Homfray, pulling five wagons loaded with ten tons of iron and 70 passengers at an average speed of 2.4 mph (3.9 kph), taking just over four hours to travel the ten miles. The event made national news. However, it was a one-off. The steam engine had been too heavy for the tracks, and several of them had broken under its weight; so the engine was returned to stationary operation.Trevithick made two more steam engines. One was in 1804 for use at Wylam Colliery near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The second, in 1808, was more famous: Trevithick brought it to London to demonstrate it to the public, in what he called a 'Steam Circus'. A circular track, 30 metres in diameter, was constructed on open ground in the centre of London, near Euston Square in Bloomsbury. A steam locomotive named Catch Me Who Can pulled a carriage around the track at a speed of 12 mph (19 kph). The public were invited to pay one shilling to ride in the carriage -- making this technically the world's first railway to carry fare-paying passengers, even if they only went around in a circle. However, the Steam Circus was plagued by the same problem Trevithick had before -- rails breaking under the weight of the train -- and was a commercial failure. It closed after two months, and Trevithick went bankrupt the following year.Trevithick’s Steam Circus in London. (Note: this is an artist’s impression not a contemporary illustration as was once believed).Not long after, the Middleton Railway, having already converted to iron rails, remained at the forefront of technology by introducing steam power as well. John Blenkinsop, the manager, addressed the problem of rails breaking by patenting a rack and pinion system in 1811. A gear mounted on the locomotive would engage in a toothed rack laid alongside the tracks, in order to propel the train forward. This system allowed the locomotive to be made much lighter in weight than a conventional design while still being able to move. A Leeds-based engineer named Matthew Murray built a locomotive, called the Salamanca, to Blenkinsop's design, and it entered service in 1812. Three more locomotives were purchased later.The Middleton Railway thus became, in 1812, the world's first commercially-successful steam railway carrying freight. It also achieved two more firsts; the first company to employ a full-time professional train driver, and (tragically) the location of the first fatal railway accident involving a member of the public, when in February 1813 a 13-year old boy named John Bruce ran onto the track in front of the oncoming train.The same year, 1813, the Wylam Colliery in Newcastle, which already used a Trevithick steam locomotive, put into service another, called Puffing Billy, constructed by the company's own in-house engineering team headed by William Hedley. This locomotive remained in service until 1862 and was then sold to the Science Museum in London, where it is still preserved -- making Puffing Billy the oldest surviving steam locomotive in the world.Puffing Billy, built in 1813, the oldest surviving railway locomotiveIn 1814 the self-taught enginewright at Killingworth Colliery in Northumberland, George Stephenson, built the first of many steam locomotives of his own design. His first engine was named Blücher, and could haul 30 tons of coal at 4 mph (6 kph). Stephenson based his design on the work of Matthew Murray, the Middleton Railway's enginemaker, but went for the conventional adhesion traction system rather than rack and pinion. He coped with the rail breakage problem by using multiple sprung wheels to distribute the weight of the engine better.In 1820-22 Stephenson was hired to construct an 8-mile (13 km) railway for Hetton Colliery in County Durham. This was unique in being the first railway to use steam power (and gravity, on downward slopes) exclusively -- all previous railways had also employed animal power as well.George StephensonMeanwhile, in 1818 a consortium of businessmen were planning to build a 25-mile (40 km) railway from the coal mines around Bishop Auckland in Durham to the port of Stockton-on-Tees, passing through the town of Darlington on the way. A large number of Quakers invested in the new company; but they ran into problems when two local aristocrats refused to allow the railway to pass through their lands. A new route was planned out, and finally in April 1821 the Stockton and Darlington Railway company received permission from Parliament to begin construction. In July 1821 George Stephenson was hired as chief engineer and surveyor (in 1822 his salary was set at £660 per year).Originally the plan had been to use horse-drawn wagons, but Stephenson persuaded the company to use steam locomotives instead. The first track was laid in May 1822, and in September 1825 Stephenson's company delivered the first of two locomotives, given the name Locomotion No. 1. The railway also used two stationary engines fitted at the top of steep inclines to help pull the trains up them. On Stephenson's advice the railway also used the new wrought iron rails, which could bear a greater load without breaking, rather than the more brittle cast iron used on previous railways.Locomotion No. 1, the first locomotive to transport fare-paying passengers on a public railway, in 1825The Stockton and Darlington Railway opened to the public on 27 September 1825. Locomotion No.1 departed from Shildon near Bishop Auckland pulling a passenger carriage and 21 coal trucks which had been temporarily converted to carry people, and up to 600 passengers. People on horses rode alongside the train as it left the station, but as it accelerated up to 15 mph (24 kph) they were left behind. When the train reached Darlington two hours later it was greeted by a crowd of around 10,000 people. It then travelled on to Stockton.The noteworthy thing about the Stockton and Darlington Railway is that it was the first public railway using steam locomotives. There had been earlier public railways, but they used horse-drawn carriages; there had been earlier steam-powered railways, but they were privately-owned by coal mines or other industrial concerns, and not open to the public. However, it should be noted that horse-drawn carriages also operated on the line at first; it was not entirely steam-powered. Another noteworthy fact is that the railway used the gauge of 4'8½" (1.435 m) which Stephenson had also used in his earlier projects at Killingworth and Hetton: this would become the 'standard gauge' used on roughly 55% of all the world's railways today.The main business of the Stockton and Darlington Railway was transporting coal from the mines to the docks, but it did also carry passengers as a sideline. It was highly profitable, earning £2,000 in revenue in its first three months of operation. By 1832 it was paying its shareowners a dividend of 8% per year. The company also expanded, building new lines and investing in subsidiary railway companies. In 1863 the Stockton and Darlington Railway company owned 320 km of line and 160 locomotives; in that year it was amalgamated into the North Eastern Railway, which in 1923 became the LNER.Opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1825There remains one more 'first' to recount: the world's first public railway using exclusively steam locomotives. This was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830. The L&MR was also the first railway with an organised signalling system, the first to carry mail, and the first to operate according to a printed timetable.The L&MR company was set up in 1824, to connect the thriving industrial city of Manchester to the busy port of Liverpool, and to compete with the existing canal network (which was seen as too expensive by the railway's promoters). George Stephenson was hired as engineer in 1824, then sacked in 1825, only to be re-hired in 1826.The route of the new line stretched for 31 miles (50 km), and a deep bog, called Chat Moss, was a major obstacle which required innovative methods to build across. The line also needed 64 bridges and a tunnel, and took four years to construct. It was a double-track line throughout its length, another first.In 1829 the company organised an open competition for steam locomotives, to find a suitable design for use on the railway. (They were also considering the use of stationary engines pulling trains along by cable, as an alternative.) The Rainhill Trials began on 6 October, and ten designers were invited to enter, though in the event only five brought locomotives to the competition. A prize of £500 was offered, and each locomotive would be expected to pull a train of three times its own weight for a total distance of 70 miles (back and forth along a straight length of track just over a mile long), with one refueling stop, and 60 miles of that distance to be at a speed of at least 10 mph. Up to 15,000 people came along to watch.Only one of the locomotives actually managed to finish the trial successfully: the Rocket, designed by George Stephenson and his son Robert. It pulled a 13-ton load at an average speed of 12 mph (19 kph) and reached a top speed of 30 mph (48 kph). The Stephensons got the contract.Modern replica of the RocketShortly before the opening of the railway, the famous actress Fanny Kemble was one of the guests invited to travel on the new locomotive on a test journey. She wrote that she felt an inclination to pat the 'curious little fire horse' which pulled the train, and was astounded by how fast it travelled; faster than any human had ever travelled before (non-fatally and in a horizontal direction, at least!):The engine having received its supply of water, the carriage was placed behind it, for it cannot turn, and was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five miles an hour, swifter than a bird flies (for they tried the experiment with a snipe). You cannot conceive what that sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible, too. I could either have read or written; and as it was, I stood up, and with my bonnet off 'drank the air before me.' The wind, which was strong, or perhaps the force of our own thrusting against it, absolutely weighed my eyelids down. When I closed my eyes this sensation of flying was quite delightful, and strange beyond description; yet strange as it was, I had a perfect sense of security, and not the slightest fear.The railway was opened to the public on 15 September 1830 in a grand ceremony. The Duke of Wellington, who was the Prime Minister of the time, was invited to attend, along with many other dignitaries. Eight trains left Liverpool, one by one, at 11:00 am as a band played and onlookers crowded every available vantage point. There was a minor accident as one train became derailed and the one behind failed to brake in time, crashing into the back of it; but it was travelling slowly enough that no serious damage was done and nobody was hurt.The same could not be said an hour later. At Parkside, near the halfway point, the Duke of Wellington's train stopped to take on water. Although the passengers were asked to stay on board the train, about 50 of them ignored the instruction and got out, standing around and talking to each other on the railway tracks. One of the senior dignitaries, William Huskisson (a former President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for War) went over to speak to the Duke of Wellington through the window of his carriage. At this point, someone noticed the Rocket approaching down the other line pulling a train, and shouted a warning. Most of the people milling around heard the warning and moved out of the way, but three people were slow to react.The driver of Rocket, Joseph Locke, threw the engine into reverse when he saw people standing on the tracks, but he was travelling too fast to stop. One of the three people on the tracks was grabbed out of the way by someone else with more presence of mind; the second was able to flatten himself against the side of the Duke's train and avoid injury. Huskisson, however, seems to have panicked. He ran backwards and forwards, losing precious seconds, then decided to try and get into the Duke's train. He opened a carriage door and tried to climb up, but while hanging from the door he was hit by the oncoming train, and fell under it. His leg was mangled; he was taken to a nearby house, and died later that night from blood loss and shock.Parkside Station, where the accident occurredHuskisson was not the first victim of a fatal railway accident, but he was a nationally-known figure, so his death had great impact. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, and decided that neither the railway company nor the engine driver were at fault.Despite this tragedy, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway commenced scheduled operations the following day. In its first week the railway carried 6,104 passengers, at a ticket price of seven shillings for first class, 4s for second and 3s for third (in open carriages); by the end of its first year it had transported nearly half a million people. The journey took about two hours; previously, a stagecoach had taken three hours and a canal boat 30 hours.Third class passengers on the Liverpool and Manchester RailwayThe success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened the floodgates to mass rail travel, aided by an Act of Parliament of 1844 which limited passenger fares to a penny per mile. By 1840 there were 1775 miles of railway track in Britain; by 1850, 6200 miles.Outside the United Kingdom, Belgium opened its first railway in May 1835 connecting Brussels and Mechelen. The first locomotives on the line were George Stephenson's designs. In December 1835 the Ludwig Railway in Bavaria was Germany's first rail line; again, the first locomotive to operate on the route was built by Stephenson and Co and imported from England.In the United States, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first public railway offering a passenger service, opening in May 1830; but at first it used horse-drawn carriages as well as steam engines. The South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company began operations in December 1830, and was the first railway company in the US to use exclusively steam power.

Photos and flyover video montages of these “bicycle graveyards” — which, to be honest, are beautiful in a terrifying and haunting way — are merely another share-worthy meme in a long line of Chinese memes, following the trail of “ghost cities”, the rise of an ominous-sounding “shadow banking” sector, “building roads and bridges (and high-speed rail) to nowhere” and my personal favorite, the “treadmill to hell”:Are the ghost cities in China just Western propaganda?Why does China have 64 million unoccupied homes?How did China use more cement in the past three years than the US in the entire 20th century?Is China over-investing in high-speed rail?Is China's credit bubble really a problem?Could China's shadow banking create a similar situation as the 2008 US financial crisis?The common thread with these memes is an overly simplified narrative that does not scratch much below the surface, consider the wider context, and often conforms to the pre-existing notion that economic development in China is generally unsustainable, to a large extent fake, and carried to its natural conclusion, will end in tears — accompanied with a healthy serving of schadenfreude piled on thick and heavy.It is very tempting to read about these meme-worthy mangled mountains of multi-chromatic mass-transit mobility machines — say that three times fast! — and conclude that this is yet another example of China’s propensity to waste, and another sign of the impending apocalypse. But if you take the time to scratch below the surface and dig one or two levels deeper, you’ll realize that truth and reality are a lot more nuanced and very different from the simple memes that dominate your various news and social media feeds.First of all, it’s an extremely young industry — a veritable toddler that a mere four years ago existed only in the minds of a couple of recent college graduates. It is a shame (or perhaps laziness) that some can scan a few photos, skim a few articles or even come across a mass of unused bicycles on a random Chinese city street, and think they have enough ammunition to draw a firm conclusion about how this toddler of a business model is a “failure”. When a drooling three-year old stumbles on the sidewalk or runs into a lamp post, do adults roll their eyes and come to the conclusion that “this kid will just never make it”? Of course not. So why are we doing that here?Even more significantly, by deciding at this early stage that you already know how the story ends, you close yourself off from diving deeper and considering alternate endings. And by doing that, you might just be missing out on a chance to gain a deeper and better understanding of the complex, rapidly evolving, and not black/white place that is China.You see, when I started to see these multi-colored bicycles rapidly clog the streets of Shenzhen and Shanghai and other cities in China, I made a conscious decision to dig deeper. And what I found was a story that was absolutely fascinating in the way that it touched on so many important themes about China’s rapidly changing economy — from the role of mobile payments as an enabling platform technology, to the “Game of Thrones”-like battle being played out by Alibaba, Tencent and up-and-comers like Meituan — which as I will delve into below, now owns Mobike, one of the two companies that dominate the space today.You can read a lot more about those specific ancillary themes here (What does the bike-sharing mania say about the Chinese economy?) but for now let’s turn our attention back to our drooling toddler, starting from the very beginning with a key protagonist in the story, the Bicycle.The Amazing BicycleAnyone who has ever owned a bike knows that they are not the easiest things to maintain. Like the brawny Leafcutter Ant[1], bicycles carry loads that are multiples of their own weight — perhaps one turn too many, in my case! — while having to travel at high speeds on paths of varying quality under all sorts of weather conditions. To keep these faithful machines in good working condition, its gears need to stay lubricated, its tires inflated, its brakes aligned, etc.This is my trusty made-in-Taiwan Giant FCR1 city bike. It’s a good-looking bike with something like twenty-one different gear-speed combinations, fast tires, really strong brakes and an aluminum-alloy frame that makes it super light but still sturdy.I store it in a bicycle rack in the basement of my building, protected from Mother Nature. I only ride occasionally, taking it out maybe once every few weeks when the weather is nice. Because I do not ride that often, I usually need to check that the tires are fully inflated before riding. Once, I forgot to pump up the tires and I ended up blowing out the front tire when I hit a pothole and had to replace the inner tube at typical NYC extortionary pricing.There is a lot of maintenance involved and I do not even ride it that often and despite the care and attention of its owner — i.e. someone who actually cares about the well-being of the bicycle — it still breaks down every so often.Now imagine a bike that is used multiple times per day, by riders that don’t care about its well-being, and typically sits outside exposed to the elements. As you are probably beginning to imagine, shared bikes get old rather quickly, especially when they are used heavily.The financial term for “getting old” is “depreciation” and this is an important point that we will come back to later. So let it stew for a bit while we jump into our time machine and make a quick stop in late 2014 in Beijing, when a handful of recent graduates from Peking University who loved cycling decided that they wanted to start a business together.The “Little Yellow Bike”At the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos, Li Keqiang (China’s second-in-command) formally introduced the notion of “mass entrepreneurship” (大众创业万众创新[2]) — a concept that had already been broadcast informally for some time. Answering the call, five members of Peking University’s cycling club decided they wanted to focus on bicycle tourism and called their business “[math]ofo[/math]” due its resemblance to a cyclist hunched over on his/her bike, not to mention its easy pronunciation.The bicycle tourism idea didn’t pan out and neither did many subsequent follow-on ideas. By April 2015, according to the account given by then 24-year old principal co-founder Dai Wei (戴威)[3], ofo was down to its last 400 yuan (around $60)[4] and struggling to pay suppliers. Things were getting a bit desperate.That is when they stumbled upon the idea of shared bikes. Over the May 1st “Worker’s Holiday” (Chinese equivalent of Labor Day), Dai Wei thought long and hard about the pain points of owning a bicycle for college students. Having lost five bicycles in four years of college, he had firsthand experience with the pitfalls of bicycle ownership. They began to develop the idea of sharing and renting out bicycles on Peking University’s campus and wanted to be ready for the students when they returned in the fall.At 8 am on the morning of September 7th, 2015, the six ofo employees stood in front of a row of yellow bicycles marking the first official day of operations of its shared bicycle service at Peking University. The team had somehow convinced 500 students to register for the initial launch.By the second day after launch, there were 300 rides ordered. After ten days, 1,500 rides were being ordered daily. By the end of October, ofo was providing over 4,000 rides per day to the university students. The team knew that they had finally hit upon a viable business idea. Like Facebook a decade earlier — which had begun at Harvard — ofo began expanding its business model to other college campuses.A Simple Narrative of the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Shared Bikes in ChinaIn China, good ideas do not stay hidden for long. Or even for a short time.By late 2016 — less than a year after initial conception — dozens of companies had been funded in the space and the industry had already entered the “land grab” phase[5]. With 60,000 bicycles, ofo was serving over half a million rides per day and was on the verge of expanding outside of college campuses into cities with plans to increase the number of bicycles one hundred fold. To do this, it had recently raised $130 million in funding and was in the process of raising another $450 million (in a round that closed in early 2017).The speed of adoption and the very visible impact on people’s lives in such a short time period was breathtaking. With so much going on, Chinese people proudly annointed bike-sharing as one of the “Four New Inventions” alongside mobile payments, high-speed rail and e-commerce.The problem was that everyone else was pursuing the same strategy. Another startup with a seasoned entrepreneurial team, Mobike, had launched in Beijing and was about to announce a $100 million funding round from well-known investors like Hillhouse, Qiming, Sequoia and Tencent.The race — pun intended — was on. Over the course of the next two years, on the back of billions of dollars in largely VC-backed equity, over 20 million bicycles would enter the streets and alleyways of large and small cities across the nation.Shared bicycles in Shenzhen, early 20172017 is when the problems of rapid scale began show up in the news reports, especially in Tier I cities where the front lines of the “land grab” war were taking place. At some point in Shanghai there were around 1.7 million shared bikes ,[6] which comes out to one shared bike for every 15 residents. Experts thought the optimal number was around 500,000 shared bicycles, or one for every 50 residents.A brutally competitive environment led to rumors and allegations of companies sabotaging competitors’ bicycles, and users abusing the system by parking bicycles inside their own private property, throwing bikes into the river and other anti-social behaviors. City residents complained of crowded, messy sidewalks where many of the bicycles did not even work properly. Local officials began taking measures to curb the amount of bikes on the street and soon thereafter, pictures of these massive “bicycle graveyards” began to show up.Source: MediumBike-sharing companies began to drop like flies, many merging their operations in an effort to stay afloat while others were shut down or acquired out of effective bankruptcy[7], sometimes refusing to refund deposits that had been paid by users when they signed up to their apps. Even ofo, the original dockless (or station-less) shared-bike company with all of its funding, ran into expansion issues and announced that it had to massively scale back its once-promising international operations and cut back on bicycle orders.With all this going on, were the naysayers right all along? Was dockless bike-sharing on its way to a quick demise and yet another example of “credit-fueled inefficient capital spending” in China? Were the photos and flyover videos of spectacular “bicycle graveyards” accurate metaphors for the prospects of the industry?Not so fast. Let’s step back for a moment and think about what we are looking at in these pictures in the context of the much bigger picture.Thinking about the Big Picture, SlowlyLet’s face it, China is a big place. You’ve heard it all before. 1.4 billion people! Miles and miles of seemingly endless high rises! The world’s largest consumer of steel, cement, coal and luxury goods! The list goes on.It is the level of scale that is hard to truly comprehend for the human brain.Let me explain what I mean by “truly comprehend”. We can easily tell the difference between two cookies and three cookies. We might even be able to tell the difference between fifteen and sixteen cookies. But unless you are Rain Man, there is almost nobody on the planet that can instantly process and count the 246 toothpicks that I just spilled on the ground[8].The brain’s physical limitation shows up in other areas of study, like anthropology with the concept of Dunbar’s number[9] i.e. the cognitive limit on the number of real relationships humans can have (around 150 to 200).And this all kind of makes sense. When we were figuring out how to survive on the African savanna, there was really no need for our brains to figure out how to count more than a few dozen of anything. “I see five apples, everyone in the family gets one apple tonight. I see two lions, I better run.” To comprehend numbers past a couple hundred, the human brain had to start abstracting (and fortunately for human civilization, it had the capability of doing exactly that).By now you’re probably thinking … how is any of this relevant?Quick! Take a look at this picture and within ten seconds, tell me how many bikes you think there are in that pile? Definitely more than a hundred. Probably more than a thousand. Five thousand? Twenty thousand? Half a million?The answer is around 10,000 bicycles — this was a picture taken on January 13, 2018 in the city of Xiamen as you may have noticed in The Atlantic article[10] referenced at the top in the question link.If you had more than ten seconds, many people might have been able to get close … perhaps by estimating the cubic volume of that pile and doing some basic arithmetic based the space taken up by a haphazardly placed bicycle … or perhaps by running a “how many jellybeans are in this jar?” style poll and averaging out the responses from a few dozen people to get a pretty good approximation.But in a snap judgment type situation (like skimming through a news article), the best the human brain can probably come up with is … “a lot”.And yes, 10,000 bikes is definitely “a lot” … in certain contexts. Is it “a lot” in comparison to the number of total shared bikes in Xiamen? Is the beautifully documented existence of this pile and even many others significant in the context of all of the shared bikes being utilized across the country? How long did it take to accumulate this pile of bike — a day, a month, the past year?If my (often drooling) toddler saw a pile of say 1 million bikes next to that pile of 10,000 bikes and was asked “how many?”, he’d probably answer, “a lot a lot?”. And frankly, for the numbers we are talking about, that response would about as accurate as any adult’s, including Rain Man himself.The point is, as much of an impression these photos make on your “fast” brain, until you start to process everything with your “slow” brain, you really can’t begin to answer this question of “failure” on the basis of looking at some photos and watching some videos.So let’s move away from “thinking fast” and making snap judgments. As former Nobel Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman might say[11], let’s “slow down” and really think about this question with the rational part of our brain. This means diving into the actual numbers that are coming in from the field in real-time.From Rapid, Iterative Design Cycles to Bicycle GraveyardsLooking at those massive piles of mangled bicycles, many naturally assumed that most of those bicycles should never have been manufactured in the first place. These assumptions were certainly egged on in many cases (implicitly or explicitly) by the authors of these articles themselves. In other words, “bicycle graveyards” fit perfectly in the “China is wasteful and over-invests in capacity” theme.And while there was certainly some truth to this (i.e. the “land grab frenzy” I described above) it’s really a lot more complicated than this simple narrative. This is the point at which the idea of bicycle depreciation re-enters the story.As with any early-stage venture, as ofo began to scale in 2016, the company began to realize that you could not just use any old off-the-shelf bike as part of its shared bike fleet. First, because it was a dockless system, you had to install a GPS-enabled box that could lock and unlock the bike remotely. But more importantly, you had to design a bike that could withstand the rigors of being used (and frequently abused) by the general public. For instance, regular bike tires with an inner tube pop all of the time, so perhaps using solid rubber tires made more sense. Steel bikes rust easily when exposed to the elements, so maybe it made more sense to go with more expensive aluminum-alloy bikes.As detailed excellently in this podcast[12], the shared bike companies had to essentially re-design the bicycle from the ground up for this new use case. One implication of this is that the first couple generations of shared bicycles had design problems which led to a high percentage of them having to be discarded. In other words the depreciation rate was very high for the first couple iterations of bicycles as the entrepreneurs figured things out and learned from their mistakes.Source: Hackernoon: Evolution of Dockless Bike/Bikesharing Designs and Thoughts on the IndustryOn top of this, the bikes were actually being used in a big way. Low fees (1 RMB, 15 cents for a typical ride), widespread availability, and smartphone-enabled ease-of-use led to tens of millions of urban residents signing on and using the service in the first 18 months. Shared bikes were incorporated into the rapidly developing local delivery networks that were driven by China’s e-commerce boom.So what happens when you have millions of bicycles on city streets that are being used fairly heavily, a large portion of which were not designed for this type of usage? You end up with a lot of broken bicycles.The original goal was to design bicycles that could last four years. This means that if there were, say, 10 million active bicycles out there, the natural rate of depreciation would mean upwards of 208,000 bicycles per month having to be replaced. That is twenty piles like the one you see above created every single month based on normal usage. And since we know the real-world depreciation rate was much faster than 4 years, this further increases the rate at which discarded bicycles are generated.The point here is that the mere existence of massive “bicycle graveyards”, taken out of context, could mean multiple things, not necessarily just the “waste” thesis that many naturally assumed or were led to assume. Indeed, one of the major reasons why there were so many discarded bikes is because they were actually being used out there in the real world! And isn’t that the whole point?Even the over-building issue itself is likely a one-time, non-recurring effect of China’s “scale fast and fail fast” entrepreneurial mentality. It took a mere three years for the industry to go through Gartner’s “hype cycle”[13], and after about two years of “disillusionment”, the industry has effectively shrunk down to only a handful of players that are no longer focused on “growth at all costs” but figuring out how to compete with each other for market share in other ways (like improving the service).In other words, China’s shared-bike industry is settling into a less chaotic and more rational market equilibrium, which means the wastefulness of the frenzied “land grab” phase is unlikely to repeat itself again in the same way … at least in the bike-sharing industry (although in other new industries, this cycle is very likely to repeat itself).Capital Efficiency: Docked vs. DocklessOn April 4, 2018, Meituan, an O2O (online-to-offline) powerhouse that is part of the next generation of Chinese mega-unicorns, announced the acquisition of Mobike, ofo’s key competitor, for a total consideration of $2.5 billion. As the leading player in the local on-demand delivery sector (primarily for restaurants), the acquisition of Mobike was seen as a strategic acquisition ahead of its impending initial public offering.From Mobike’s perspective, this was a chance to bolster its balance sheet resources in the cutthroat battle for dominance in the shared bicycle industry, and partnering with a fellow Tencent equity investee made a lot of sense. A few months later, Meituan completed its initial public offering in Hong Kong, raising over $4 billion to replenish its war chest to continue its own brutally competitive fight with Alibaba, Didi and others.One of the side effects of Meituan’s acquisition of Mobike and the subsequent listing is that we now have some more insight into the numbers behind the bike-sharing industry. Up to this point, the public had to rely primarily on patchy, selective, sometimes-inflated[14] disclosure from private companies or leaked, often-stale information from previous fundraisings.For example, on page 23 of Meituan’s listing prospectus[15], we catch an audited glimpse into the operational performance of Mobike through the first four months of 2018:“48.1 million active bike users”“7.1 million active bikes”“1.0 billion rides completed in the four months ended April 30, 2018” which annualizes out to 3 billion rides per year, or 8.2 million rides per day. I will note that these include two of the coldest, least bike-friendly months of the year, especially in the frigid Northeast.We already knew how much capital had been invested in Mobike to get them to that point, approximately $825 million during that frenzied “land grab” phase from August 2016 to June 2017.Doing some simple arithmetic, we can start to see some interesting operating metrics:Mobike “spent” about $117 of equity capital per active bike. I put “spent” in parenthesis because they also collected refundable deposits, revenue from paying customers, while also having to run operations, account for broken bikes etc.The average Mobike active user uses the service about 5 times per month.Each active bike is used on average 423 times per year (about 1.2 times per day).Now how do we judge whether these operational metrics signal any sort of capital efficiency? Looking at its financials for signs of operating profit is one way but Mobike’s financials are not broken out and in any case, a good case can be made for why at this stage in the market when the industry is still growing rapidly and there are still fierce competitors out there, it makes sense to prioritize market share growth over accounting profitability (in addition to other strategic considerations).But one way of benchmarking how Mobike’s capital efficiency is by comparing to alternative systems.So let’s take a look at Citibike, a well-known docked bike-sharing system in New York City that is now owned by Lyft:Total cumulative funding for Citibike has been around $200 million[16].Citibike’s total system capacity is around 12,000 bicycles and ridership (during the good weather months) is around 50,000 per day[17].There are around 150,000 active Citibike users. So the average Citibike user rides around 10 times per month and the average Citibike is used 1,500 times per year (roughly 4 times per day).Citibike invested approximately $16,700 of capital per bike. The main reason why this is so high is because of the need to build the docking station.Citibike is still unprofitable as the system operator.The averaged-out cost of a Citibike ride is around $1.82 — compared to 15 cents for a typical Chinese ride.Nice an orderly … but there’s a steep price to pay …Now some rough comparison numbers:Mobike took in around 4 times the invested capital of Citibike and is providing 165 times the number of daily rides.Over its lifetime (since May 2013), Citibike has cumulatively served around 70 million rides. Mobike serves this number every eight days.Individual Citibikes are used more intensively (four times per day vs. Mobike’s once per day) but for the same cost of putting out one docked Citibike on the street, you can deploy more than one hundred dockless ones.While this comparison is not necessarily indicative that Mobike is capital efficient (it is still losing money, after all), it is pretty convincing that at the very least, Mobike has been significantly more capital efficient than Citibike.The Drooling ToddlerFrom 2014 to 2015, I was living in Taiwan. We were renovating our place and I was enjoying some time off after working hard in the investment industry straight through since graduating from college. I distinctly remember using a docked bike-share service called U-Bike in Taipei and thought it was comparable to the first year of using Citibike service in Manhattan. I had generally satisfactory experiences with both.With the renovations completed, we moved back to States in the fall of 2015. This was around the time that Dai Wei and his ofo co-founders were first launching their bicycle sharing service on the campus of Peking University. I had boxed up all of my papers and personal effects into around forty banker boxes and remember sitting in my office trying to figure out how to deal with everything … should I keep it, scan it, file it, throw it away, etc.I am proud to report that I have finally finished organizing these boxes! It only took a little over three years! Sigh …Where am I going with this? Okay, I have to admit that this little vignette has zero relevance to the dockless, bike-sharing story in China, except to highlight one thing:In the time it took me to organize a few dozen banker boxes here in Lower Manhattan, an entirely new industry was created from scratch in China that today collectively serves billions of rides per year and has had a massive impact on urban development, mass transit patterns and the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. It is an industry that is almost undoubtedly going to be permanently ingrained in the fabric of urban China — possibly with electric upgrades[18][19] by more or less the same players that have survived the frenzied competition environment of the last two years.At the 5-year college reunion:Glenn: So, what have you been up to?!Wei: Oh … I just … you know … nothing crazy … started a company … revolutionized urban transport in China … you?Glenn: Hmmm. Well … I did finally clear out some boxes.This is an industry that is literally younger than my toddler — who I am also happy to report, is finally starting to drool less. I am not even going to get into the carbon-saving potential or all of the knock-on effects of collecting trillions of heretofore inaccessible data points and how they can be used to inform future urban development, allocate resources and help optimize consumer habits.If after getting through all of this, you still think that the three-year old dockless, bike-sharing model in China is a failure … on the basis of some anecdotal, totally-removed-from-context-but-striking-in-an-admittedly-beautiful-yet-haunting-way photos and videos … the only thing I have left to say is that your standards for what qualifies as a “success” must be higher than two hippies riding a hot air balloon at a Grateful Dead concert.Footnotes[1] Leafcutter ant - Wikipedia[2] 大众创业、万众创新 - 维基百科，自由的百科全书[3] 戴威（ofo共享单车创始人）_百度百科[4] https://www.xuehua.us/2018/06/22/%E6%A1%88%E4%BE%8B-%E8%B6%85600%E4%B8%87%E8%BE%86%E5%B0%8F%E9%BB%84%E8%BD%A6%E8%83%8C%E5%90%8E%E7%9A%84%E5%88%9B%E4%B8%9A%E6%95%85%E4%BA%8B/[5] Glenn Luk's answer to What happened to the shared bicycle economy in China?[6] 上海共享单车40%以上的有故障，谁来管？--上观[7] Subscribe to read | Financial Times[8] Rain Man (4/11) Movie CLIP - 246 Toothpicks (1988) HD[9] Dunbar's number - Wikipedia[10] The Bike-Share Oversupply in China: Huge Piles of Abandoned and Broken Bicycles[11] Thinking, Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman: 9780374533557: Amazon.com: Books[12] Ep. 16: Bike-sharing in China, Part 2: Mobike and the Future of Personal Transportation - Pandaily[13] Glenn Luk's answer to What happened to the shared bicycle economy in China?[14] Mobike responds to claims of inflated numbers · TechNode[15] http://www3.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2018/0907/ltn20180907011.pdf[16] Citi Bike - Wikipedia[17] Citi Bike System Data | Citi Bike NYC[18] Are you a robot?[19] Mobike launches electric bike for dockless sharing

$5,000 is enough to get going. Below is what I did to write this post, I bet with a few hours, I can shave off a few more bucks here and thereA quick review of people looking for roommates shows I can get a “decent” place, on the DART route, that is furnished, and includes basic bills for $200/month. Private bedroom shared bath and living spaces. Three month commitment required - cost $600.Sprint is running a great deal right now for unlimited data for 1 year for $24/month, along with $9/month for a Samsung S9 (same phone I use now, so I know it’s fine). Three month cost - $100, with taxes $125.I can get a new (important, as I need the warranty), laptop, with office on it, for $129.00[1] . After taxes and repair warranty (I’d almost never buy, but I can’t have this go), $175.00. I also need a printer/scanner ($99 for a REAL good one) and a ream or two of paper ($12), as well as basic office supplies (pads of paper, pens, and the like) ($10).I also buy a pre-loaded $250 green dot card (or the like) and setup an uber account, so I can get where I need immediately if I can’t wait for the bus or DART rail or if I’m “out” in a meeting and need to pay for lunch — basically only to be used in emergencies, but I want to have a viable card.In browsing on Walmart’s website, I can get a set of sheets, a blanket, two pair of jeans, two pair of khaki shorts, underwear, socks, sneakers, a pair of dress shoes, a few tshirts, a couple of polos, a light weight jacket, a razor, bathroom necessities (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, soap, shampoo, wash cloth, two towels, brush, etc.), for $225 (maybe less, I’m rounding up).I then go by Men’s Warehouse and get two suits (by one get one free) for $279, two pairs of slacks, two ties, a sports coat, and three dress shirts for just under $500.I need food. Luckily the house I’m in has a refrigerator and freezer. I’m feeling pretty good about myself at this point, so completely blow the bank and buy frozen chicken, rice, peanut butter, a stack of $1 frozen pizzas, some fruit, a bunch of pasta and spaghetti sauce, salt, pepper, and some other spices, butter, bread, lunch meat, cereal, and some other items. To keep the numbers below even, I’ll say I FULLY stock up for $254. I can’t imagine I’d spend this much, but I’ll be conservative.Spent so far: $2,000.Pre-paid card: $250.Now all of my immediate needs are seen too and I can start moving forward. At this point, I’ll assume it’s a Friday.The next two days are planning — probably 12 hours a day — and applying for positions. Step 1, get employed. Step 2, start developing own business again. I’ve started and run businesses in a variety of industries.The first thing I do is start applying for government benefits, as those are the easiest things to take care of. Texas welfare programs aren’t great, but anything helps. I’d qualify for $192/month in SNAP (food/EBT card) benefits. I can make that work easily. I also qualify for short term rent and utility grants — probably a max of $1,000. Other than that, with my age, education, etc., I probably don’t qualify for much else (medicaid). Oh well, every bit helps at this point.Next is the job front. I’m a licensed attorney, a registered investment advisor, a certified financial planner, have engineering and economics degrees, and prior to most post-grad life, have experience computer programming, in IT, teaching, and a lot of manual labor experience. This means I qualify for quite literally hundreds of jobs.I prepare resumes for law firms to be emailed and hand delivered. I’d map out a circuit of downtown, uptown, and through the major buildings. I’d apply through any online postings, but will likely have better luck in person. I immediately find out what firms are hiring and dig into their connections — e.g. are they active in the Dallas Bar Association, charity work, or the like and go join those organizations so I can start meeting people.I do the exact same thing with each hedge fund in town. Each real estate investment firm. Each trading desk. Every investment bank. Every financial planning job and investment analysis position.Rinse and repeat for programming positions and teaching jobs.I find a local church to get highly active in immediately. I find a large charitable organization in town (e.g. Margarita society, entrepreneurs for north texas, etc.), and make sure I start devoting a minimum of 5–10 hours to each per week.The MOST Important thing to do at this point is start to develop connections.Any job works. But I won’t take the VERY first thing through the door, as the right job is more important. I need something with a little flexibility — I can’t work 12 hour days 7 days a week unless there’s truly nothing else — because I need that time.In the perfect world, through one of the entrepreneur organizations I’ve joined, I meet someone who is interested in launching a new investment fund, real estate firm, programming company, professional services firm (law, investments, accounting, engineering, don’t really care what) and hook up with them. If I CAN’T find that, then I’m starting on my own.I figure it’ll take me a maximum of one month to find a serviceable job. I’m not going to bicker over whether I get paid $60k/year of $65k/year. I only plan on working here 6 months to a year, max.Every single penny that comes in goes to savings. I want to keep my monthly budget under $500 if at all possible. In six months, I should have been able to save at least $25,000, or more. If I get a good position (which honestly, with my education and background I SHOULD be able to find something in the $90k-$110k range fairly easily in this economy), then I should be able to save up $50k or more.That is more than enough to launch my next business. To properly start a business, you need to commit to it. Which means, when my account hits $50k, I’m quitting my job and devoting 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, to the new business. With a $50k initial budget, I can rent a nice office that provides a receptionist, conference room space, phone numbers, and the like for $300/month. Business cards, website development, marketing development— I can do all of that on a shoestring budget.Then it’s using all of those connections developed over the last six months to drive business to you — whatever it is.In less than 4 years, I’m back to where I am now.And that does’t even count writing and web based services. I can take contract programming jobs, contract website development work, and create a subscription based advisory website in a variety of industries to work on growing over time on the “side.”Some have asked what if I CANT find a job? In that case, one of two things:Manual labor. I did this in college, in a economic downturn. There are temporary manual labor places that pay $15/hr or so, provided your’e there at 4 or 5 am to get the “good” jobs. This pays the bills while I’m looking for something better; orMove. Seriously, there are places in this country right now (West Texas for example) that you can get hired by walking into a building. There are huge worker shortages.If neither of those works - then I’m volunteering, every day. I have enough “savings” to last me about 3 months, 6 if I scrimp. I pick probably 2–3 places that are supported by local professionals and a major church. I’m still putting in 10–12 hour days, 7 days a week - for free for the sole purpose of meeting people and growing a network.While I’m doing this, I’m volunteering to intern at law firms, financial firms, and anywhere that’ll take me for free. I can quickly make myself invaluable and even if that doesn’t translate to a job, it will translate to more connections.If I can spend 3 months, working for free in a large firm, in that time I’ll be able to identify 2–3 other associates that are talented, as well as learn which clients feel they’re over charged or don’t like the service they’re getting. Give me 3 months and I’ll have enough clients lined up, along with a couple potential partners, to be moving off on my own.And if all of that doesn’t work — then I’m starting my landscaping/mowing business, I use to model the benefits of being an entrepreneur in a talk.IF you have an education and IF you have SOME money in hand ($5,000 is plenty), this is still the land of opportunity — you just have to go kick in the doors and grab it.EDIT 1: Some people have pointed out they don't see a million dollars in the above answer, and that's what I get for assuming people understand about wealth.You get a million dollars by building assets, such as a business. Law firms and other service based businesses are typically valued at a multiple of earnings. The last one I saw sold went for about 1.25x. So if my firm billed one million dollars, it'd be worth about 1.25m and I've hit my target.You don't get to be worth millions by having a job and depositing cash very often. Building cash flowing business is MUCH easier and more reliable way of getting to a million.Footnotes[1] 14" Ultra Slim Laptop, Windows 10 Home, Office 365 Personal 1-Year Subscription Included ($69.99 Value), Full HD, Intel Processor, 32GB storage, Front camera with 10 hour battery - Walmart.com