Bikeshare trips in Seoul, South Korea

Abstract

The bikeshare program in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, generates more than a million trips per month with more than 1500 bikeshare stations and about 20,000 bikes operating across the city. We examine the spatial patterns of bikeshare usage in Seoul, which is a very densely populated city with a large metro system. We analyze the association between land use, subway stations, employment density, population density, and bikeshare usage with negative binomial conditional autoregressive models that account for spatial correlation. For all the models, results show a positive association of bikeshare usage with the number of subway stations and employment density, with the former having a larger effect. Agricultural and Amusement land uses have negative associations with bikeshare usage in many models. We also examine different types of trips to distinguish differences between “loop trips” (starting and ending at the same station) and purposeful trips between two destinations. The former displays a pattern suggesting “loop trips” are more likely to be recreational trips.