Effects of dockless bike-sharing systems on the usage of the London Cycle Hire

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effects of dockless bike-sharing systems on the usage of the London Cycle Hire (LCH). A total number of 707 LCH docking stations are included for a period of 36 weeks. Covariates such as socio-demographic characteristics, traffic conditions, and the built environment are included in the data set. A difference in difference (DID) based propensity score matching (PSM) method is applied to select control docking stations and estimate the effects of the dockless bike-sharing systems on the LCH usage. The results suggest that a significant reduction of 22.42 (5.93%) in the average weekly usage of each LCH docking station is caused by the dockless bike-sharing system after its initial launch. We also investigate the effects of dockless bike-sharing systems on the characteristics of the LCH trips, including travel duration, travel distance, and departure time. The majority of trips replaced by the dockless bikes are short duration (0–15 min) and middle distance (1–3 km) trips. The reduction in the average weekly short duration trips of each station is 16.91 (7.16%), while the figure is 15.11 (6.74%) for middle distance trips. The average travel duration is increased by 0.25 min, but the travel distance shows no significant change due to data restriction. Furthermore, the LCH usage is significantly reduced by 6.85% during the weekday commuting peak, and 10.47% during the weekend leisure peak. As to weekday off-peak and other times, reductions are not statistically significant.