Using Envision™ rating tool to assess the sustainability of public bike sharing systems: A case study of the Tel-O-Fun project in Tel Aviv-Yafo

Abstract

Public bike-sharing (PBS) systems have been deployed in hundreds of cities worldwide. Yet, their sustainability has never been comprehensively assessed. Envision™ rating system has been designed to provide a broad sustainability framework that can be applied to a wide range of infrastructure projects, including PBSs, throughout their lifespan. By retroactively applying Envision to a PBS project in Tel-Aviv–Yafo, this study serves the dual purpose of first time using Envision for rating a PBS and providing a critical evaluation of Envision’s merit for rating this type of infrastructure. The study revealed that, overall, the project scores highly as a sustainable infrastructure. However, several practices could have been implemented to improve sustainability performance. The findings also demonstrate that the sustainability inherent in PBS is largely overlooked by Envision, which focuses on the process rather than on the purpose of the project, neglects many important considerations of social sustainability, does not often evaluate sector-specific concepts, disregards locational and temporal context, ignores the PBS’s inseparable linkage with a supporting cycling lanes infrastructure, and omits negative aspects. The paper concludes that without incorporating these considerations, Envision is probably inadequate to support a sustainable design of PBS in a true holistic manner.