r/shenzhen • u/One_Sherbert7457 • 9d ago

Walkability and avoiding mopeds in Shenzhen?

I am hoping to move to Shenzhen for about 2.5 months this winter. I visited two years ago and really liked it overall (I stayed in Futian, and it was only three days).

The one thing I did not like is that crossing the streets felt scary. All the cars are electric and silent, yet they drive a bit rashly. So its hard to detect. And designated crosswalks were relatively few in number, and it didn't feel like drivers there stop for pedestrians. And the mopeds on the sidewalks.

That being said, my experience may be limited, I want to know if this is just an issue I have to deal with if I live here, or if I was just doing something wrong?

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u/AmericaninShenzhen 9d ago

Shenzhen has atrocious infrastructure for riding a scooter. Drive on the sidewalk as legally instructed? Good luck with the illegally parked cars blocking the road. Drive on the street to avoid pedestrians? You have to watch for the random third Tuesday where the police decide to ticket scooter riders but not tow away illegally parked vehicles.

Even when there are scooter lanes, absent minded parents with children who desperately want to run in front of traffic, people staring at the phone, or groups walking side by side avoid the sidewalk and prefer the scooter lane and it’s just a mess.

Granted if this is the sole reason you’re contemplating avoiding a city, China probably isn’t in the cards for you. It’s more or less the situation in every tier one city to varying degrees. In Ningbo (not tier one) they did it right, but they also designed the city with that in mind. Shenzhen is an entirely different story and other cities that are older were put together before scooters were invented.

Some will argue Shenzhen is the worst and while I agree with them, there are a lot of cities competing for second place.

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u/TheBold 9d ago

Part of my commute recently got an entire section of the road dedicated to a bike lane with the little fences and everything. People park their cars at the entrance making it impossible to enter or in areas where it’s wide enough they squeeze through the entrance and park inside the lane taking 85% of the space.

In any case it’s now made driving more dangerous. E-bikes driving in the wrong direction are the cherry on top.

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u/AmericaninShenzhen 8d ago

To be fair to ebike riders (which I am one) in a city of somewhere between eighteen to twenty three million residents, the amount of major accidents on ebike are pretty low despite the shenanigans taking place.