Abstract
Bike sharing is one of the most promising urban planning interventions to facilitate an all-necessary transition towards a more sustainable transport paradigm. Regardless of the fact that hundreds of schemes run in more than 50 countries worldwide, bike sharing is still moderately investigated by research. This paper reports on a primarily quantitative study of 558 responses that was set to frame attitudes reflecting public acceptance towards the rapidly expanding bike-sharing scheme in Gothenburg, Sweden (Styr & Ställ), in an attempt to identify the ‘formula for success’. The respondents generally believed that Styr & Ställ is a pro-environmental, inexpensive and healthy transport mode, which complements the city’s public transport services and promotes a more human-friendly identity for Gothenburg. Even the respondents that self-reported a small (or no) likelihood to use bike sharing were positive towards the scheme. This means that they recognise that bike sharing has a significant pro-social potential and is not a system favouring a particular road-user segment over others that might not be interested or able to use it. The fact that the majority of the respondents do not use the scheme and yet its popularity is still vast indicates that there is much potential for more use in real terms.
Highlights
Automobility, according to Sheller and Urry (2000), fosters a civil society of hybridised ‘car-drivers’ that support the transformation of public spaces into flows of traffic, coercing, constraining and unfolding a transport domination in contemporary cities, which has been somewhat downplayed and not dealt with adequately for a number of years
One of the key steps towards such a transition is replacing a significant proportion of the car use, associated with short inner city trips, with active transportation options such as walking and cycling and with a more frequent use of public transportation
The principal goal of the present paper is to look into the attitudes of people living in Gothenburg towards bicycle use in general and bike sharing in particular and explore the local scheme’s ‘success ingredients’ and its potential to become a more well-embraced travel option in actual usage terms
Summary
Automobility, according to Sheller and Urry (2000), fosters a civil society of hybridised ‘car-drivers’ that support the transformation of public spaces into flows of traffic, coercing, constraining and unfolding a transport domination in contemporary cities, which has been somewhat downplayed and not dealt with adequately for a number of years. One of the key steps towards such a transition is replacing a significant proportion of the car use, associated with short inner city trips, with active transportation options such as walking and cycling and with a more frequent use of public transportation. The implementation of bike-sharing, in particular, is one of the most distinctive practices for inspiring travel behaviour change, since it blends active transportation with public transit. Together with the city’s bus network, which includes a four-line bus rapid transit scheme and express busses, trams form the basis of a public transport system and are responsible for 196 million trips per year (Trafikkontoret, 2014a). In early 2013, a roadpricing scheme was introduced in the city centre to regularly enforce, in some respect, modal change, while parking charges have been established for many years in the central and residential areas of the city
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