The cost of sharing bikes and docks: Quantifying rent and work requirements between four bike sharing systems in North America

Abstract

Despite the popularity of bike sharing systems (BSS), few studies have quantified cost of service of BSS and how travel behavior may be influencing it. As such, much debate exists about the potential of bike sharing, with some studies advocating benefits from increased utilization while other studies warning of costs from excessive rebalancing operations. This paper introduces a new metric to quantify cost of service in BSS as theinfrastructure rent(for bikes and docks) and rebalancing work required to mobilize a pattern of trips, and it presents a comparative study between four BSS in North America during one month of operations, focusing on four questions: What would be the infrastructure rent requirements of each system’s trip pattern if no rebalancing work were done? What were the resulting infrastructure rent requirements of each system’s trip pattern based on the rebalancing work that was done? How effective was the rebalancing work that each system did in reducing the infrastructure rent requirements of its trip pattern? How does occupancy variability and travel pattern asymmetry influence cost of service? Results show that service requirements and, thereby, potential, vary substantially between systems based on the spatiotemporal characteristics and asymmetry of their trip patterns and that each system responded differently to these requirements in terms of infrastructure capacity and rebalancing work.