Impacts of COVID-19 on the usage of public bicycle share in London.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the adoption of many unprecedented measures to slow down the spread of the virus. Such measures have greatly impacted the entire transportation system and individuals’ travel behaviors. This paper evaluates the impacts of COVID-19 related policies, including the lockdown and the first lockdown ease on the usage of public bicycle share in London using interrupted time series approach. Our results indicate that the UK’s lockdown led to an immediate decrease in the London Cycle Hire (LCH) usage, while the first lockdown ease had no statistically significant immediate impacts. Moreover, during the lockdown period, the LCH usage showed an increasing trend and the first lockdown ease led to a much larger increase rate. Such impacts vary by the trip characteristics (i.e., occurring period and trip duration). The morning peak trips and short duration trips maintained a lower usage level during the lockdown and the lockdown ease period. On the contrary, the number of other LCH trips were much larger than that in normal days. Furthermore, the impacts on the LCH stations near the rail stations, hospitals, and parks also varied differently. The LCH trips near the rail stations reduced more after the imposition of the lockdown policy while those near the hospitals reduced less. The LCH stations near the parks had a much higher increase rate during the lockdown and the lockdown ease period than the general level. Our results provide practical implications for the policy makers and operators of the public bicycle share system.