GTrusted
Bangalore has a deserved reputation for heavy traffic congestion mostly due to rampant unplanned growth from its hi-tech industry. As a result, driving in Bangalore can sometimes feel like the Gridlock episode of Doctor Who.
To help address this problem, the state of Karnataka (where Bangalore is based) has started India's first shared bike service in Mysore (or Mysuru) and has plans to soon expand that to Bangalore starting eight areas including MG Road, Indiranagar and Koramangala. This new shared bike service, called Trin Trin, was partially funded by the World Banks and more government driven, and is similar to the other regional approaches that have been adopted in other countries outside of China.
In China, Mobike and Ofo dominate the entire country with a sea of orange and yellow bikes which are very inexpensive to use and super user friendly.
India appears to be going more the route in the other places like the US where there is a lot more regional fragmentation.
The New York metropolitan area has the largest shared bike fleet in the US through Citi Bike, with CitiBank as the lead sponsor.
Washington DC and the surrounding Virginia and Maryland metro areas have Capital Bikeshare, owned by local governments.
The Boston metro area has Hubway which is also owned by local governments.
The San Francisco Bay Area has Ford GoBike, an effort by Ford to diversify away from its traditional car business and become a transportation service provider.
Portland, Oregon has hometown Nike to brand its BikeTown efforts. Other select cities or universities in the US can use services like LimeBike.
Small countries like Singapore have services like oBike where people often park their bikes anywhere.
To try out Mysore and soon Bangalore's Trin Trin App, we downloaded it from Google Play on our Google Pixel.
Starting up the Trin Trin App are very simple introduction screens for how to use.
It's also easy to register for a Trin Trin App, even for international visitors without a local India phone number.
After the obligatory permission screens, we needed to log into the App again.
After logging in we could immediately see all the bike stations available in Mysore.
One of the challenges of using shared bike services in China is the need to have local China payment systems which is quite difficult for international visitors to access.
The nice thing about Trin Trin is that its payment systems are friendly to locals and foreign visitors alike, allowing you to use both international credit/debit cards and local bank payment methods. This makes a lot of sense since Mysore is a famous historical city visited by a lot of tourists which is one of the main target users of the App.
However the question for Bangalore is whether Trin Trin can really make a dent to solve its traffic problems. Our experience using Mobike in similarly densely crowded urban environments is that these shared bike services are a great compliment to existing metro systems, solving the last mile for commuters that need to get from a subway station to home or work.
Unfortunately, Bangalore doesn't yet have a well built out public transportation system. Poor road quality, lack of bike lanes and safe pedestrian walking areas, and unorganized traffic will also present challenges that shared bike services in other cities don't have to contend with.
We wish Trin Trin for the best when it finally launches in Bangalore but we are not holding our breath that gridlock will get solved until the long road ahead for the city to complete its metro train network build out.
