SINGAPORE, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced on Friday that it will grant full licenses to two Chinese dockless bicycle-sharing operators, Mobike and ofo, and a local-born operator, SG Bike, by the end of October.
Meanwhile, it will grant sandbox licenses to three other service operators, Anywheel, Grabcycle and Qiqi Zhixiang, but will not grant a license to the seventh applicant, GBikes, as it did not satisfy the assessment criteria.
After paying for the license fees, the six service operators with licenses will be required to right-size their bicycle fleets to the approved fleet size, because the current utilization rate of the more than 100,000 shared bicycles in Singapore is at a low level, according to the LTA.
The authority said about half of the entire shared bicycle population in Singapore is not actively used. "We will give operators sufficient time to right-size their fleets and transit to the new licensing regime," it added.
LTA also said it intends to grant sandbox licenses to the three operators with little or no experience in operating shared bicycles, to encourage innovation and reduce barriers to entry for new operators.
