HelloRide staff member goes into Siglap canal to retrieve shared bike left behind

After a video of a man riding a HelloRide bicycle along a canal made its rounds online, the bike-sharing service clarified that he was a staff member retrieving the bicycle.

In the early morning on Jun. 23, HelloRide received a report from a member of the public that one of their shared bicycles was in a canal near 139 Lorong K Telok Kurau, the CEO of HelloRide Singapore Hayden Choo said in response to Mothership's queries.

The company confirmed the bicycle's location via the GPS tracking system and then arranged for an operations team member to recover it.

They also filed a police report in the hopes of determining the culprit.

Video

The sight of the team member riding the bicycle inside the canal drew some attention.

The user who posted the TikTok video of the incident on Jun. 23 had thought the man was trying to cycle to the sea and was taking a shortcut through the canal.

Towards the end of the video, the man got off the bike and pushed it up the slope out of the canal.

HelloRide explained in the comments that a bike was reported in the canal, and their team headed down to retrieve it.

@keanmonomaybe he knows a shortcut♬ original sound - keanmono

Retrieval

The team member was sent to the canal equipped with recovery equipment, including a rope and retrieval hook, Choo said.

Initially, he was unable to recover the bicycle using these equipment as the bicycle was located some distance from the canal bank.

But it was eventually recovered safely and removed from the canal the same day HelloRide received the report.

The bicycle was later inspected by the operations team and found to have no damage. It has since been returned to service.

Choo said that incidents of this nature are "extremely uncommon" for the company.

"We will continue working to ensure our bicycles remain properly accounted for and available for users," he added.