Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 471
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 471 – PASSAGE – 2

IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 471
READING PASSAGE – 2
THE BOOM IN THE BIKE-SHARING BUSINESS
A. The boom in smartphones and associated development in apps has seen an added boost for the bike sharing business. Bike sharing itself as a usable concept has been around since the mid-60s in Europe, but the relatively recent information technology explosion from the middle of the 2000s has made it a genuinely viable format that is more practical nowadays across the board.
B. The practicality of these bikes now provides the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle for many commuters, being cited as the way to solve ‘the last mile’ problem when connecting people from the public transport network to both home and the workplace. In addition, these programs appeal to tourists as well as local citizens. As one of China’s larger cities and a very popular tourist destination, Hangzhou was pro-active in creating what was at one time the largest bicycle sharing system in the world.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
C. Community bike programs and smart bike programs alike can be seen, with the former being organised by locally community groups and/or non-profit groups, and the latter being implemented by government agencies often in partnership with private enterprises. The fundamental aim of these systems is to provide affordable access to bicycles for short-distance trips in cities and towns as an alternative option to vehicle public transport or private cars, thus easing traffic jams and congestion, noise pollution, and nasty emissions.
D. Theft of one’s own personal bike is a primary concern for most users who have switched over from riding their own bike to the shared bikes on offer. In addition, vandalism and damage, concerns regarding upkeep, safe storage and safe parking are contributing worrying factors for the common cyclist. Other driving factors are of course primarily economic, time-saving, health / fitness, and the ever looming environmental reasons.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
E. Government funding, charitable sources and advertising are the three commonly used methods to support community bike sharing projects as they are mostly unable to fund and support themselves using the available revenues of membership subscription and other user. There are various ways to implement these schemes based on one or more options. These include being unregulated whereby bikes are released into a given area for use by anyone.
That given area could be a city or more typically an enclosed organisation such as a large company site or a university campus. The massive disadvantage here is that the bikes are often simply not available and the loss rate of the bicycles is very high owing to a lack of locks, security and user identification. A deposit-based system releases the bikes from a designated terminal and that deposit can only be retrieved by returning the bike to another official terminal. Again, loss of bikes is a serious issue as the deposit to cost of bike ration is unbalanced and so does not deter bike theft.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
F. The membership structured approach has shown to be more effective, and the key within the system here is the member must register their authorised identity and a valid credit card to be allowed to have access to the bikes. If the bike is not returned within the subscription period, or returned with significant damage, the bike sharing operator withdraws money from the user’s credit card account. A system has been developed whereby a member need not return the bike to a kiosk; rather, the next user can find it by GPS.
G. Bike-sharing systems have undergone a plethora of changes which can be categorised into three key phases, or generations. These include the first generation, called white bikes (or free bikes); the second generation of coin-deposit systems; and the third generation, or information technology (IT) based systems. The technological and operational improvements of recent years are also paving the way for a probable fourth generation, known as the demand-responsive, multimodal system. E-bikes are the proposed next benefactor of a potential fifth generation as both software and hardware technologies continue to advance.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
H. The popularity of these schemes comes with a price. In March 2017, for example, Beijing saw well over 200,000 bikes entering service. The bikes are accessible via an app, and cost 1 RMB per hour plus a refundable damage deposit of a few hundred RMB. In April 2017, the government in Beijing is requesting a temporary ban on the introduction of new shared bikes as serious issues with the sheer volume of bikes on the streets, bikes in parking stations and bikes left scattered around the city is becoming an issue to resolve in itself.
Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs, A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
14. Sources of finance for schemes that do not directly charge users.
15. An instance where unrestrained introduction of schemes led to serious problems.
16. The provision of the long-awaited missing link in the typical commuting chain.
17. The catalyst for this seemingly simple transport option to become more practical.
18. The inadequacy of requiring riders to pay a small refundable fee before use.
19. The differences marking the development of the underlying technology.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 20-23
Look at the following statements (Questions 20-23) and the list of different bike-sharing schemes below. Match each finding with the correct bike-sharing scheme, A-E.
20. Proved effective half a century ago without the use of modern technology.
21. Requires payment but still suffers from a high rate of bicycles being stolen.
22. Became so popular that tight controls had to be established.
23. Are sometimes unregulated as long the riding area is restricted.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Types of bike-sharing schemes
A. Deposit reliant
B. Approved by Beijing municipality
C. Community based
D. Provided by the city of Hangzhou
E. European
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 24-26
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
THE TWO-WHEELED RIDE-SHARING REVOLUTION
Recent technological advances mean urban bike-sharing schemes, once limited and somewhat unrealistic, are now without a doubt 24__________ appealing for both commuters and tourists. Cyclists who opt for public bikes say goodbye to worries about 25___________, storage or unintended damage. Free and deposit-based systems have given way to third generation IT-based schemes, while demand responsive, multimodal systems are just over the horizon. Without controls, however, these schemes could be victims of their own success as large cities are only just beginning to grapple with the problems that 26__________ brings.
IELTS Academic Reading Test

IELTS Academic Reading Test
ANSWERS
14. E
15. H
16. B
17. A
18. E
19. G
20. E
21. A
22. B
23. C
24. PRACTICAL/VIABLE
25. THEFT/VANDALISM
26. POPULARITY
IELTS Academic Reading Test