Hong Kong isn’t known as a cycling city – for transport or for leisure. But if you take a closer look, you’ll eventually find them.
Hong Kong Island and Kowloon
Delivering packages to a shop.
Gas bottles.
Crossing Nathan Road in Kowloon.
Or Hennessy Road in Wan Chai.
Dodging trams on Des Voeux Road Central.
Or even riding along the tracks.
New Territories
I wasn’t until I visited the New Territories to find people cycling for fun.
Bike paths run beside the water.
And bike paths connect tower blocks.
I found people cycling to shopping centres.
MTR stations.
And occasionally taking their bike on the train.
Cycling being so popular that ‘no bike parking’ signs had been installed, along with plastic screens to prevent people from locking their bikes to the fence.
The New Territories was the only place where I saw bike shops.
Folding bikes appear popular for recreational cyclists.
But some shops cater to more serious cyclists.
But the only place I saw a ‘serious’ road cyclist was in the hills climbing out of Repulse Bay.
Outlying Islands
A cycling utopia – that is what the outlying islands of Hong Kong are, thanks to their narrow streets and lack of cars.
There were shops hiring bikes to tourists.
And the occasional cargo trike.
As soon as you stepped off the ferry, bikes were everywhere.
But the bike parking areas were something else.
Bikes parked everywhere.
There is a 24 hours time limit for bike parking.
With the government reserving the right to close the parking area with 14 days notice, so that abandoned bikes can be removed.
And I found one such clearance operation underway.
And the bike share plague
The bike share industry entered Hong Kong in December 2017.
With green ‘Gobee’ and yellow ‘ofo’ bikes soon appearing across the city.
I found the bulk of the bikes dumped in the New Territories.
Beside the road.
Down dirt paths.
In the bushes.
Slowly getting covered in weeds.
Nowhere near as creative as the dumped oBikes in Melbourne, Australia but just as messy.
So many things right in HK, but so sad how it has blown up to be dysfunctional. The loss of foreign tourism income must be immense. I suppose the mainland will transfer some money to prop up HK.
“A cycling utopia – that is what the outlying islands of Hong Kong are, thanks to their narrow streets and lack of cars.”
Are there any bike paths on these islands? This does not include shared paths.
The only separated bike paths I saw were in the New Towns of the New Territories – the Outlying Islands are are predominately small villages that predated any formalised land use planning.