Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has been influencing travel behaviour in many urban areas around the world since the beginning of 2020. As a consequence, bike-sharing schemes have been affected—partly due to the change in travel demand and behaviour as well as a shift from public transit. This study estimates the varying effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the London bike-sharing system (Santander Cycles) over the period March–December 2020. We employed a Bayesian second-order random walk time-series model to account for temporal correlation in the data. We compared the observed number of cycle hires and hire time with their respective counterfactuals (what would have been if the pandemic had not happened) to estimate the magnitude of the change caused by the pandemic. The results indicated that following a reduction in cycle hires in March and April 2020, the demand rebounded from May 2020, remaining in the expected range of what would have been if the pandemic had not occurred. This could indicate the resiliency of Santander Cycles. With respect to hire time, an important increase occurred in April, May, and June 2020, indicating that bikes were hired for longer trips, perhaps partly due to a shift from public transit.
Highlights
Cycling as a sustainable mode of travel is proven to be associated with several benefits such as reducing motorised traffic in urban areas, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the need for parking spaces, and improving mental and physical health due to an increase in physical activity [1,2,3,4,5,6]
In this research we investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the London bike-sharing scheme
The data set used in this study is related to the London bike-sharing system and was obtained from Transport for London (TfL)
Summary
Cycling as a sustainable mode of travel is proven to be associated with several benefits such as reducing motorised traffic in urban areas, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the need for parking spaces, and improving mental and physical health due to an increase in physical activity [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Several interventions and policy instruments have been devised to reduce the negative externalities of motorised traffic and encourage more people to cycle [1, 2, 7]. Bicycle-sharing is one of the key policy interventions integrated into many urban transportation networks across the world, with the aim of promoting cycling [7, 8]. The London bike-sharing scheme (Santander Cycles), one of the largest schemes in Europe, was launched in Central London on 30 July 2010 with 5000 bikes available at 315 docking
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