Exploring intra-urban human mobility and daily activity patterns from the lens of dockless bike-sharing: A case study of Beijing, China

Abstract

In recent years, the emergence of dockless bike-sharing has brought new ways of transportation, while also providing support for observing urban dynamics at a finer granularity. This study uses dockless bike-sharing data, combined with point of interest (POI) data, to explore intra-urban human mobility and daily activity patterns, using Beijing as a case study. Here, we employ spatial statistics and graph network to quantify the characteristics of travel behavior. Firstly, spatiotemporal statistics analysis was conducted to investigate the travel patterns and spatiotemporal differences of bike-sharing in Beijing. It was found that bike trips have clear peak hours and highly overlap with the subway lines, indicating that the bike-sharing system effectively completes the ‘last mile’ of travel in Beijing. Secondly, graph networks were used to reveal the core patterns and community structures of human mobility in Beijing and their connections to daily activities. Our findings indicate that there are different core structures of human mobility in Beijing, some dominated by a single core node, while others are formed by the aggregation of multiple cores. Finally, POI data was used to analyze human daily activity patterns. We analyzed the temporal characteristics and the hotspot areas of each daily activity in Beijing and found that transferring to other transportation modes is the most popular activity for people riding bikes, followed by shopping, working, and eating out. These findings provide a reference for understanding urban human dynamics and urban structure from the perspective of dockless bike-sharing.