A New User-Based Incentive Strategy for Improving Bike Sharing Systems’ Performance

Rayane El Sibai,Khalil Challita,Jacques Bou Abdo,Jacques Demerjian

doi:10.3390/su13052780

Abstract

The benefits of having a Bike Sharing System (BSS) in a city are numerous. Among other advantages, it promotes a cleaner environment with less traffic and pollution. One major problem the users of such services encounter is that of full or empty stations, causing user dissatisfaction. The objective of this work is to propose a new user-based incentive method to enhance BSS performance. The proposed method relies on a spatial outlier detection algorithm. It consists of adapting the departure and arrival stations of the users to the BSS state by stimulating the users to change their journeys in view of minimizing the number of full and empty stations. Experiments are carried out to compare our proposed method to some existing methods for enhancing the resource availability of BSSs, and they are performed on a real dataset issued from a well-known BSS called Velib. The results show that the proposed strategy improves the availability of BSS resources, even when the collaboration of users is partial.

Highlights

Introduction and Efthimios BakogiannisThe idea of a Bike Sharing System (BSS) emerged in the twentieth century
We study the impact of the new user-based strategy on the bike distribution in the BSS stations
We demonstrate its effect on the evolution of the number of unbalanced and isolated stations during the day

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and Efthimios BakogiannisThe idea of a Bike Sharing System (BSS) emerged in the twentieth century. The first few projects were not very successful, mainly due to the theft of the bicycles [1] To overcome this problem, smart technology was integrated into the bike-sharing projects that followed in Europe and the United States [2]. Implementing a BSS in a city has several advantages, such as traffic congestion reduction, a healthier transport system where citizens can exercise, and a less polluted environment. It offers a hassle-free service to users who do not have to worry about the regular maintenance of their bikes or risk the theft of their assets [4]

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Conclusion