Public Bicycle Research Articles

Active Commuting and Sustainable Mobility in Spanish Cities: Systematic Review

The General Assembly of the United Nations established 17 sustainable development goals in its 2030 agenda, and urban mobility is in the sights of political authorities to empower sustainable cities and communities. This work con- sists of a review of the literature published within the Spanish context concerning public bicycle systems and urban mobility. To select studies, a search was carried out with different descriptors in the main Spanish and international databases, namely Scopus (Elsevier), Web of Science (WoS), and Dialnet. Some of the analysed works examine the efficacy of public bicycle systems as an efficient and sustainable alternative in cities; other works study the impact on individual and public health of shared bicycle schemes via increased physical activity engagement. Likewise, in- frastructure and facilities for cyclists are also analysed as they favour perceptions amongst the population of greater road safety within their environment. Bicycle-share systems can help to maintain healthy habits amongst the popu- lation. Better infrastructure, technology and appropriate policies can favour the use of these systems.

Spatial and Temporal Characteristic Analysis of Imbalance Usage in the Hangzhou Public Bicycle System

Calculating the availability of bicycles and racks is a traditional method for detecting imbalance usage in a public bicycle system (PBS). However, for bike-sharing systems in Asian countries, which have compact layouts and larger system scales, an alternative docking station may be found within walking distance. In this paper, we proposed a synthetic and spatial-explicit approach to discover the imbalance usage by using the Hangzhou public bicycle system as an example. A spatial filter was used to remove the false-alarm docking stations and to obtain true imbalance areas of interest (AOI), where the system operation department installs more stations or increases the capacity of existing stations. In addition, sub-nearest neighbor analysis was adopted to determine the average distance between stations, resulting in an average station spacing of 190 m rather than 15.5 m, which can reflect the nonbiased service level of Hangzhou’s public bicycle systems. Our study shows that neighboring stations are taken into account when analyzing PBSs that use a staggered or face-to-face layout, and our method can reduce the number of problematic stations that need to be reallocated by about 92.81%.

Changes in Urban Mobility Related to the Public Bike System with Regard to Weather Conditions and Statutory Retail Restrictions

The main purpose of the paper is to determine changes in transport behaviour of users of the public bike-share (PBS) scheme in a large Polish city, Łódź. By tracking GPS signals for individual trips taken by PBS users, it was possible to analyse their changeability (time and spatial) for periods before the implementation of statutory Sunday retail restrictions (2017) and after their partial introduction (2018). The study also took into account weather conditions, namely maximum and minimum daily temperatures and daily totals of precipitation recorded by a weather station in Łodź. In order to determine the correlations between certain weather conditions and PBS trips, the authors applied regression analysis. The results of the study showed that weekend cycling is less susceptible to the impact of weather than cycling on weekdays. At the same time, a comparative analysis of trading and non-trading Sundays proved that, during Sundays with retail restrictions, public bikes were used for longer, farther, and slower trips. These observations were confirmed by analyses of maps of traffic structure.

Design and Research of Electric Bicycle Networking System Based on NB-IoT Technology

With the development of cities, more and more problems have been exposed, and the consumption concept of green travel has become more and more popular. The public Internet of Things electric bicycle system includes perception level, central control level, data processing level, system service level and system management level. Perception level is used to collect public bicycle equipment and citizen bicycle rental IC card information. The central control completes networking, sends and receives perception level information, and processes data conversion information. Data processing is used to create and manage system databases, as well as to classify and process data. All application functions related to users of the public bicycle system: The system management level is used to handle all operating system management and maintenance personnel related to the public bicycle system. Based on the analysis of the narrowband Internet of Things NB-IoT technology, this article combines the advantages of enhanced coverage, large links, low power consumption, and low cost of the technology, and adopts a three-layer architecture to propose an electric bicycle system based on NB-IoT. The current electric bicycle system has disadvantages such as poor real-time performance and high power consumption, and saves resources. Through experiments, the scale of the system can be dynamically configured, which greatly reduces the communication pressure on the system background, and at the same time makes the system's transmission rate of different communication distances reach 99% on average, and the average delay reaches 7s. The real-time performance of the system is still a certain problem.

Optimal Operation Solution for Public Bicycles Based on Genetic Algorithm

Aiming at the various problems with the scheduling of urban public bicycles, this paper conducted a research on the shortest path between rental points and employed the Floyd algorithm to find the optimal route. Based on the conditions of limited number of bicycle transportation vehicles and in different time slots the bicycle rental points were required to restore to the original number of bicycles, a constraint scheduling model was established according to the bicycle supply-demand relationships of the rental points, and the Genetic Algorithm (GA) was used to solve the model to find the shortest path. In terms of balancing the bicycles at each rental point, this paper re-distributed the initial bicycles according to the different demands of each rental point in different time slots, and solved the problem using the solution of the first problem to obtain the optimal vehicle route. This research is a useful reference for solving difficulties in public bicycle scheduling.

The dynamic bike repositioning problem with battery electric vehicles and multiple charging technologies

The bike-repositioning problem (BRP) primarily involves determining the routes and loading instructions for a fleet of vehicles that transport bikes between stations in a bike sharing system (BSS), to mitigate the mismatch between the demand for and supply of public bikes. However, the use of fossil-fueled vehicles for this repositioning task generates pollutants and greenhouse gases, which harm the environment. The use of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) instead of fossil-fueled vehicles for repositioning bikes can mitigate this negative environmental impact. On the other hand, user demand for bikes is dynamic during the daytime. Therefore, this study addresses the dynamic BRP with battery electric vehicles. Multiple charging technologies are available at charging stations to allow repositioning vehicles to recharge en-route at different speeds and costs. The objective is to solve the problem by minimizing the weighted sum of the penalty costs of unmet user demand and the charging costs of repositioning vehicles. A rolling horizon framework is adopted to incorporate the revealed inventory levels at bike stations, the BEV load of bikes, and the battery energy levels of BEVs at regular intervals. An artificial bee colony algorithm with an embedded dynamic programming method for computing the loading instructions is proposed to generate solutions. Computational experiments are conducted on a real-world BSS, and three aspects of the problem properties are analyzed: the horizon settings, the various penalties for failed rentals and returns, and the charging-related settings. The results provide practical insights into the use of BEVs for daily bike-repositioning tasks in BSSs.

The Governance Challenge within Socio-Technical Transition Processes: Public Bicycles and Smartphone-Based Bicycles in Guangzhou, China

In urban China, utilitarian cycling plays a significant role in achieving sustainable mobility. Within this context, different kinds of sharing-bicycle programs equipped with new technologies/devices emerge and extend. By comparing two generations of them in Guangzhou (China), this paper explores how new technologies impact existing modes of mobility governance. First, the technical innovations, e.g., app-based bicycle locks and micro-GPS equipment, contribute to liberating emerging private companies from existing governmental regulations based on land control. Second, the adoption of these innovations not only contributes to the accumulation of cultural and symbolic capitals based on a fashionable lifestyle but also links bicycles to personal point-to-point travel data that could be translated to economic capital. Third, the discrepancy between the dispositions of the government and private companies regarding the innovations opens an opportunity for the quick extension of sharing bicycles, which brings both positive and negative consequences on citizens’ daily travel and life. The absence of other civic actors in the decision-making process accelerates the negative consequences caused by the profit-driven fast extension of sharing bicycles and the governmental top-down governing logic. These findings provide academia with implications for understanding the impact of innovations on achieving sustainable mobility.

Bi-objective optimization for customers’ satisfaction improvement in a Public Bicycle Sharing System

In recent years, the popularity of the Public Bicycle Sharing System (PBSS) for urban transportation is increasing. The fleet size of the system and the capacity of its stations are some key factors in establishing a successful sharing system. These factors affect the number of rejected demands and the lack of free docks for returning bicycles because of demand variation at stations. This paper presents a bi-objective optimization solution for PBSS in which the first objective function minimizes the mean number of rejected requests for renting bikes and free docks for returning bikes per each satisfied demand. In other words, this function tries to minimize the mean number of dissatisfied users per each replied demand for renting. The second objective function minimizes the total number of bicycles and docks of the system. The goal is to minimize users’ dissatisfaction with the least possible fleet size considering capacity constraints. The model is discussed under Jackson Network and the Mean Value Analysis (MVA). Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to solve and examine the efficiency of the proposed model via different numerical examples.

Changes in Passengers’ Travel Behavior Due to COVID-19

The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 has changed the way people travel due to its highly contagious nature. In this study, changes in the travel behavior of passengers due to COVID-19 in the first half of 2020 were examined. To determine whether COVID-19 has affected the use of transportation by passengers, paired t-tests were conducted between the passenger volume of private vehicles in Seoul prior to and after the pandemic. Additionally, the passenger occupancy rate of different modes of transportation during the similar time periods were compared and analyzed to identify the changes in monthly usage rate for each mode. In the case of private vehicles and public bicycles, the usage rates have recovered or increased when compared to those of before the pandemic. Conversely, bus and rail passenger service rates have decreased from the previous year before the pandemic. Furthermore, it is found that existing bus and rail users have switched to the private auto mode due to COVID-19. Based on the results, traffic patterns of travelers after the outbreak and implications responding to the pandemic are discussed.

Toward Sustainability: Bike-Sharing Systems Design, Simulation and Management

Bike-sharing systems (BSSs) are a mobility service of public bicycles available for shared use that is becoming increasingly popular in urban contexts [...]

How does weather affect bikeshare use? A comparative analysis of forty cities across climate zones

This study examines the effect of weather on bikeshare use. We employ data from forty Public Bicycle Sharing Programs located in forty cities (16 countries) across five different climate zones, spanning tropical to boreal climates. Our curated dataset is longitudinal and consists of nearly 100 million cycling trips. Key findings include: (a) the most significant variable, particularly on weekdays, is the time of day, followed by precipitation; (b) in most cities, usage increases on weekdays and weekends up to a point around 27 to 28 °C, before declining; (c) usage by hour usually follows a bimodal or trimodal daily pattern on weekdays, except for schemes which are too small to serve a commuter function (weekend and weekday usage is similar in small schemes); (d) weekend usage peaks at around 2 to 3 pm in most schemes, except those in hotter climates where the peak is around 5 pm; (e) precipitation negatively affects female ridership more than male ridership; and, (f) a changing climate is likely to affect cycling by boosting ridership in cold climates and lowering ridership in warm climates, but the effects will likely be small. In the spirit of reproducibility, all data and R code are publicly available.

The role of bike sharing stations in the perception of public spaces: A stated preferences analysis

The pervasiveness of bike sharing schemes around the world has the potential to bring important benefits in terms of public health and reduction of congestion and emissions. However, there can be negative externalities associated to these systems, especially in terms of misuse and degradation of public spaces. This paper explores how the presence of different shared bicycle systems and their stations affect peoplés perceptions of public spaces and neighbourhoods. For this, a stated preferences experiment was created and applied in Santiago de Chile, depicting two main scenarios (downtown and residential) with various configurations of public bicycle stations (dock-based and dockless), along other cycling facilities on a street. Survey results were used to estimate a choice model, measuring the impact of the scenario attributes on the probability of being chosen as a preferred public space. Attitudes about bikesharing, the environment and mobility in general were also measured and used to estimate latent variables and their role in public space perception. Results show bike sharing stations are overall positively perceived in terms of their capacity to improve a neighbourhood’s image, safety and accessibility, although this is more likely in compact urban contexts and for users of bikesharing. Disorganized (dockless) bicycles left on sidewalks are perceived negatively, although not enough to make individuals prefer a situation without public bicycles. The previous findings indicate that bike sharing schemes could have positive effects on the image of neighbourhoods by making them look more attractive and modern.

Multi-objective Optimization of Vehicle Routing with Resource Repositioning

This paper deals with a vehicle routing problem with resource repositioning (VRPRR) which is a variation of well-known vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery (VRPPD). VRPRR in which static repositioning of public bikes is a representative case, can be defined as a multi-objective optimization problem aiming at minimizing both transportation cost and the amount of unmet demand. To obtain Pareto sets for the problem, famous multi-objective optimization algorithms such as Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2) can be applied. In addition, a linear combination of two objective functions with weights can be exploited to generate Pareto sets. By varying weight values in the combined single objective function, a set of solutions is created. Experiments accomplished with a standard benchmark problem sets show that Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) applied to solve a number of single objective function outperforms SPEA2. All generated solutions from SPEA2 are completely dominated by a set of VNS solutions. It seems that local optimization technique inherent in VNS makes it possible to generate near optimal solutions for the single objective function. Also, it shows that trade-off between the number of solutions in Pareto set and the computation time should be considered to obtain good solutions effectively in case of linearly combined single objective function.

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

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.

Comparison of Usage and Influencing Factors between Governmental Public Bicycles and Dockless Bicycles in Linfen City, China

Automobile traffic has shifted the use of bicycles in many developed regions to being mainly for sport, recreation and commuting. Due to the desire to mitigate the impacts of climate change and alleviate traffic jams, bicycle sharing is booming in China. Governmental public bicycles and dockless bicycles are the main types of bicycle sharing in China, each with different types of management and pricing. Field research has found that many bicycle sharing networks are idle and wasteful, and thus we investigated which type is more popular and suitable for Chinese cities. This research comparatively analyzes the application of governmental public bicycles and dockless bicycles, mainly focusing on the cycling destination, cycling frequency, and cycling factors, taking Linfen City as an example. The results show that: (1) The purpose is different between governmental public bicycles and dockless bicycles. On the one hand, the aim of riding a governmental public bicycle to work represents the largest proportion at about 29%, mainly because of the fixed route of travel, and the fact that the fixed placement of governmental public bicycles makes them more available compared to the random arbitrariness of dockless bicycles. On the other hand, the aim of riding a dockless bicycle for entertainment accounts for the largest proportion, at about 34%, mainly due to the ease of borrowing and returning a bike, and mobile payment. (2) In terms of frequency, the public’s choice of riding a dockless bicycle or a governmental public bicycle has no essential difference, given that there are only two options for citizens in Linfen. (3) The response to the two kinds of bicycle sharing is different; the governmental public bicycle has the advantage of lower cost, but the dockless bicycle has more advantages in the procedure of borrowing and returning the bicycle.

A vehicle for valorising the labour power of commuting: The politics of mobility fixing in Shanghai's Dockless Public Bike Sharing Sector

This paper seeks to contribute to ongoing debates around the politics of hybrid mobilities, smart cities, surveillance capitalism and mobility fixing. Based on a set of qualitative interviews with key stakeholders and secondary sources, the paper uses the emergence of dockless public bike sharing in Shanghai between 2016 and 2018 as its case study. In order to explain the emergence of dockless PBSS and illustrate our contention that this system seeks to create surplus value from the work of mobility (in this case cycle commuting), we examine the processes of valorisation that have occurred in order to both position PBSS as a worthy activity (and therefore remunerate participants affectively) and produce use values for the data generated by users. In doing so we also highlight the ways in which these processes of valorisation seek to ensure that the mobility work of users is not aligned with the products of that labour in order to avoid calls for this mobility work to be remunerated as wage labour (which would reduce any surplus value extraction). Ultimately we argue that these processes of valorisation are not only invasive, but exclusionary in that they prioritise select aspects of social practice that address matters of (governmental) concern, rather than a more rounded interpretation. We argue that there is an urgent need to recognise mobility practices beyond registers that simply prepare the ground for their marketisation.

The Influence of the Duration of Journey Stages on Transport Mode Choice: A Case Study in the City of Tarnow

In this paper, we present the effect of making too many private car journeys on city transport systems. A sustainable approach for the development of transport infrastructure is needed, which takes into account local conditions and needs, especially for areas with a high density of origins and destinations. The criteria for evaluating public transport and bicycle transport are presented, which, if acceptable to city residents, may lead to changes in transportation behaviors and, thus, a more efficient use of transport in daily travels. Factors affecting the mode of transport choice include the duration of particular stages of a journey, such as reaching the location where the first ride commences/driving from the travel origin, waiting for a vehicle (bus journeys) or ride/drive, and reaching the travel destination of the last ride/drive. Additionally, the possibility of using a car and having a seasonal ticket for public transport were taken into account. In this study, the results of detailed travel research in the Polish city of Tarnow were used. It has been proven that the low share of public transport in daily travels is due, among other things, to excessive time to reach a stop and due to walking to journey destinations, whereas the low share of cycling is mainly due to a lack of comfort and safe cycling infrastructure.

A Balanced Strategy for the FFBS Operator Integrating Dispatch Area, Route, and Depot Based on Multimodel Technologies

Bicycle scheduling is the essential strategy for balancing the demand for the public bicycle system (PBS). Existing literature pays more attention to bike scheduling models and their solutions, but seldom discusses the dispatch area and depot center. Reasonable dockless public bicycle dispatch area and optimal dockless bike dispatch depot location in the service area were discussed from the existing shared bicycle operation data in this paper. We proposed a feasible framework including bike trip network segmentation, mean-shift clustering based on the point position, VRP model, genetic algorithm, and TOPSIS evaluation method. The effectiveness and superiority of the division of the dispatch area are verified. The main evidence for this article is (1) although the cycling networks of bicycles are different at different times of the day, the results of community division are relatively stable and have great similarities. (2) The plan of the dispatch area has impacted on the operation efficiency of the PBS. For a scheduling area, the target value of the optimal scheduling strategy corresponding to different dispatch centers is obviously different. Therefore, the location of the dispatch center has a great impact on the quality of the scheduling strategy. The dispatch area determined by bike trip OD community detection has stable characteristics of scheduling costs. (3) This work is an attempt to combine big data and model technology to assist city management. We build a feasible framework to serve a balanced strategy for FFBS which can provide reasonable dispatch area, optimal dispatch depot location, dispatch truck’s route length, load action, and time window. Our proposed framework provides new ideas for regional traffic dispatching for the traffic management department and FFBS operator, which has certain practical reference significance.

Warszawska infrastruktura rowerowa w opinii jej użytkowników

W opracowaniu przedstawiono pojęcie i podział transportu miejskiego, którego transport rowerowy jest częścią. Opisano również cechy publicznego transportu rowerowego. Przedstawiono zmiany w ocenie warszawskiej infrastruktury rowerowej w latach 2018–2020, które zostały opracowane na podstawie badań ankietowych. Wykonano także analizę pola sił Warszawskiego Roweru Publicznego, wskazując elementy napędzające oraz hamujące rozwój Veturilo

Meteorological barriers to bike rental demands: A case of Washington D.C. using NCA approach

The article studies meteorological barriers to the use of public bicycle systems. The meteorological conditions have always been considered important in influencing bike-usage. Weather changes may lead to shifts in the preferred mode of travel. Studies mostly focus on the average effects and overlook their role in creating barriers. However, each meteorological factor (temperature, humidity, wind speed, precipitation, etc.) can individually disrupt the usage, irrespective of other factors' level. We conduct the necessary condition analysis for climate and weather-related factors, using hourly bicycle usage data for two years at Capital Bikeshare, Washington, D.C., to find barriers to public bicycle system usage. The analysis is performed separately on regular and casual users revealing interesting results. We find that season is not an effective barrier to bike usage. Only an extreme weather condition cause bottleneck. The elements of weather affect the usage of bikes by affecting the comfort and risk associated with riding. Lower temperature creates constraints for all users, whereas only regular bikers are constrained by low humidity. The differences in the necessary condition of regular and casual riders reveal the contrast in the perception of the two groups' comfortable riding conditions, making it essential to design the system accordingly. The results will help plan public bike systems in other cities and help in demand management at established locations. The demand projections are to be recalibrated using the bottlenecks that set in at different levels of temperature, humidity, and windspeeds. The results help in considerations about starting year-round rental services at other locations.