Time now for our "Life & Info" segment... where we focus on information useful for your everyday life.
Well, I think we've all experienced running late for work or an appointment that's too far to reach by foot but too close for a bus ride.
A number of so-called micro mobility platforms are aiming to close this gap.
We have Oh Soo-young in the studio to discuss these solutions.
We've had bike-sharing for quite some time now, but these micro mobility platforms have exploded in popularity all of a sudden. What changed?
Well, over the past few months, we've seen a sudden boom of smartphone applications which rent out dockless bicycles and electric scooters.
As you mentioned, bike sharing apps have been around for about three years or so,... mostly for leisure. A ride by the river, for instance. What's changed in recent months is that new platforms are optimizing services for commutes, and short distance journeys around the city.
"Our service helps reduce commute time substantially and also makes it more enjoyable. Our users mostly use G. Bikes for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, although some use it for much longer. The response to our service has been great so far -- with the number of users amounting to twenty to thirty times more than what we anticipated."
The biggest advantage they have is that they are dockless. The biggest bicycle sharing platform at the moment is Seoul Bike, which has designated bike stands for rental and return.
But with a growing number of bike-sharing firms like G. Bike, you can look for an available bicycle near you, using a GPS-based app, unlock it within seconds, hop on and be on your way.
If you have trouble locating the bike, you can activate a bell to find it.
Once you've reached your destination, you don't have to look for a bike stand. You can simply leave it there for someone else to use.
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So it's convenient but what about the price? Does it beat taking public transport?
It definitely does. G Bike, for instance, allows you to borrow a bike for just ten minutes at a time for 200 won -- less than 20 cents
So that's about one fifth the price of a single journey bus fare.
You can of course cycle as long as you like, with the rate applying every ten minutes. So that's much more flexible than shared bikes with fixed hourly charges,... which also require you to return and borrow them again for continued use, after the initial hour.
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It's more convenient to use and reasonabl priced compared to shared bicycle platforms we've had previously -- and traditional modes of transport.
I assume the same goes for electric scooters? I've seen quite a lot of people zipping around on these recently.
That's right. Electric scooter rentals first launched last year in the country on a platform called Kickgoing, which lets you borrow a scooter for as little as five minutes. It costs 1000 won or just under a dollar, with 10 cents added for every minute after that.
"Scooters have largely been used for leisure but it's an ideal mean