Understanding the usage of dockless bike sharing in Singapore

A new generation of bike-sharing services without docking stations is currently revolutionizing the traditional bike-sharing market as it dramatically expands around the world. This study aims at understanding the usage of new dockless bike-sharing services through the lens of Singapore's prevalent service. We collected the GPS data of all dockless bikes from one of the largest bike sharing operators in Singapore for nine consecutive days, for a total of over 14 million records. We adopted spatial autoregressive models to analyze the spatiotemporal patterns of bike usage during the study period. The models explored the impact of bike fleet size, surrounding built environment, access to public transportation, bicycle infrastructure, and weather conditions on the usage of dockless bikes. Larger bike fleet is associated with higher usage but with diminishing marginal impact. In addition, high land use mixtures, easy access to public transportation, more supportive cycling facilities, and free-ride promotions positively impact the usage of dockless bikes. The negative influence of rainfall and high temperatures on bike utilization is also exhibited. The study also offered some guidance to urban planners, policy makers, and transportation practitioners who wish to promote bike-sharing service while ensuring its sustainability.     

Inferring the trip purposes and uncovering spatio-temporal activity patterns from dockless shared bike dataset in Shenzhen,China

Trip purpose is closely related to travel patterns and plays an important role in urban planning and transportation management. Recently, there has been a growing interest in investigating the spatio-temporal patterns of dockless shared-bike usage and its influencing mechanisms. Few, however, have focused on revealing the travel patterns by inferring the purpose of dockless shared-bike trips at the individual level. We present a framework for inferring the purpose of dockless shared-bike users, based on gravity model and Bayesian rules, and conduct it in Shenzhen, China. We consider the comprehensive factors including distance, time, environment, activity type proportion, and service capacity of points of interest (POIs), the last two factors of which were usually neglected in previous transport studies. Especially, we integrated areas of interest (AOIs) and Tencent User density (TUD) social media data characterize the service capacity of POIs, which reflect the area and scale differences of different POI categories. Through the comparison between two improved models and the basic model, it is demonstrated that the introduction of activity type proportion and service capacity of POIs can improve the effectiveness of model for inferring the purposes of dockless shared-bike trips. Based on the obtained trip purposes, we further explore the spatio-temporal patterns of different activities and gain some insights into bike travel demand, which can inform scientific decisions for bicycle infrastructure planning and dockless shared- bike management.     

Enhancing equitable service level: Which can address better,dockless or dock-based Bikeshare systems?

Dockless bikeshare systems show potential for replacing traditional dock-based systems, primarily by offering greater flexibility for bike returns. However, many cities in the US currently regulate the maximum number of bikes a dockless system can deploy due to bicycle management issues. Despite inventory management challenges, dockless systems offer two main advantages over dock-based systems: a lower (sometimes zero) membership fee, and being free-range (or, at least free-range within designated service areas). Moreover, these two advantages may help to solve existing access barriers for disadvantaged populations. To date, much of the research on micro-mobility options has focused on addressing equity issues in dock-based systems. We have limited knowledge of the extent to which dockless systems can help mitigate barriers to bikeshare for disadvantaged populations. Using San Francisco as a case study, because the city has both dock-based and dockless systems running concurrently, we quantify bikeshare service levels for communities of concern (CoCs) by analyzing the spatial distribution of service areas, available bikes and bike idle times, trip data, and rebalancing among dock-based and dockless systems. We find that dockless systems can provide greater availability of bikes for CoCs than for other communities, attracting more trip demand in these communities because of a larger service area and frequent bike rebalancing practices. More importantly, we notice that the existence of electric bikes helps mitigate the bikeshare usage gap between CoCs and other tracts. Our results provide policy insights to local municipalities on how to properly regulate dockless bikeshare systems to improve equity.     

How could the station-based bike sharing system and the free-floating bike sharing system be coordinated?

The station-based bike sharing system (SBBSS) and the free-floating bike sharing system (FFBSS) have been adopted on a large scale in China. However, the overlap between the services provided by these two systems often makes bike sharing inefficient. By comparing the factors that affect the usage of the two systems, this paper aims to propose appropriate strategies to promote their coordinated development. Using data collected in Nanjing, a predictive model is built to determine which system is more suitable at a given location. The influences of infrastructure, demand distribution, and land use attributes at the station level are examined via the support vector machine (SVM) approach. Our results show that the SBBSS tends to be favored in areas where there is a high concentration of travel demand, and close proximity to metro stations and commercial properties, whereas locations with a higher density of major roads and residential properties are associated with more frequent use of the FFBSS. With regard to the methods used, a comparison of several machine learning approaches shows that the SVM has the best predictive performance. Our findings could be used to help policy makers and transportation planners to optimize the deployment and redistribution of docked and dockless bikes.     

Use characteristics and mode choice behavior of electric bike users in China

In 2005, 10 million electric bikes were produced in China. Strong domestic sales are projected for coming years, raising concerns about the sustainability and potential regulation of this fairly new mode. Policy makers are wrestling with developing policy on electric bikes with little information about who uses them, why they are used, and what factors influence electric bike travel. This paper probes these questions by surveying electric bike usage in two large Chinese cities, Kunming and Shanghai. Demographic comparisons are made between the different modes and cities as well as differences in travel patterns. Electric bike users are found to travel considerably more than bicycle users. Also, most electric bike users would travel by bus if electric bikes were unavailable. This suggests that electric bikes are less of a transitional mode between human-powered bikes and full-blown automobile ownership, and more an affordable, higher quality mobility option to public transport.     

Attitudes,norms and difficulties underlying road sharing intentions as drivers and cyclists: Evidence from the Czech Republic

Cycling-inclusive urban planning is attracting attention worldwide because of the environmental, health, economic, and transport benefits inherent to cycling from the individual and the societal perspectives. The Czech Republic is one of the emerging cycling countries that are trying to promote and support cycling, but cycling mode shares are low because of the poor quality of the scarce infrastructure and the psychological barrier of the perceived lack of safety when cycling in mixed traffic. This study takes a multimodal approach based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and focuses on the factors underlying the willingness to share the road from the perspective of cyclists and drivers: positive attitudes toward cycling, positive attitudes toward cyclists’ behavior, social norms toward cycling and anxiety to share the road. A web-based questionnaire was tailor-designed and administered in the Czech Republic via social networks, web forums, and the Civinet network, and a hybrid bivariate-ordered model tested the behavioral framework. Results show that the willingness to share the road as a cyclist or as a driver relates positively to positive attitudes towards cycling and cyclists’ behavior, and negatively to the anxiety of sharing the road. Moreover, mediator effects are observed and a clear relation emerges between the experience on the road as both a cyclist and a driver on the willingness to share the road as a cyclist. Lastly, results show that the factors underlying road sharing intentions are related significantly to gender, travel habits, and perceived personal and infrastructure-related barriers to cycling.     

An intersectional analysis of barriers to cycling for marginalized communities in a cycling-friendly French City

In French cities like Grenoble, cycling is an increasingly popular form of urban mobility. Yet a lack of disaggregated modal data makes it unclear who does and who does not have access to biking. An intersectional analysis of 19 narrative and semi-structured interviews with policymakers, residents with different identities, and bike service providers demonstrate that some people perceive unique barriers to biking, related to their identities. For example, this study finds that racism, financial precarity, a lack of accessible information about services, and spatial inequalities may prevent some people from biking despite Grenoble's advanced cycling infrastructure and services and that these barriers may compound for certain people, reinforcing the preliminary body of research on intersectional barriers to urban biking. The study further finds that the lack of disaggregated demographic data on urban mobility in France might be preventing inclusive bike policy. The paper concludes by arguing that local policymakers would benefit from applying an intersectional analysis in understanding who is and is not biking, to promote everyday biking in a more inclusive way.     

Estimation and validation of hybrid choice models to identify the role of perception in the choice to cycle

Cycling is one of the most sustainable and ecofriendly modes of travel and a good form of exercise. Many government and public health authorities recommend cycling to stay fit as well as to reduce air and noise pollution, CO₂ emissions, traffic congestion, and other negative consequences of car use. In light of these benefits, a major challenge for researchers today is how to promote cycling. However, in countries where cycling is not common, apart from the need for proper cycling facilities, one major issue concerns people’s perception of cycling for sport or recreational activities rather than as a mode of transport. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of perception in the likelihood of the bike being used for utilitarian purposes. We focus on the perception of: the bicycle as a means of transport; bikeability (in terms of usefulness and safety) and of bike infrastructure. Hybrid Choice Models (HCMs) have been used to estimate the effect of people’s perception on the propensity to bike. The HCM also accounts for the serial correlation between error terms in the discrete and latent perceptions, to allow for agent-common unknown factors. Furthermore, we also validate the model results using a hold-out sample and discuss some policy measures aimed at changing travel behavior. The results suggest that, besides individual characteristics, latent aspects related to the perception of the context and of the bicycle as a means of transport strongly affect the propensity to cycle.     

How to promote sustainable public bike system from a psychological perspective?

The public bike system (PBS) has been actively promoted worldwide for the last decade. This study tried to find out policy strategies for sustainable PBS implementation targeting on the city that is under consideration of introducing bike sharing scheme. For this, the authors considered some psychological factors that may make impacts on PBS user's attitudes and hypothesized especially that individual environmental concern refers to an attitude toward environmental issues, influence an increase of their perceived value of PBS. The Norm Activation Model (NAM) is used to measure the public's environmental concern incorporating norm activation. In addition, willingness to pay (WTP) method is adopted to investigate the value of PBS individuals. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that environmental concern influenced people's perception of the value of PBS. Furthermore, the positive correlation between environmental concern and awareness of consequences on cycling is observed. The study verifies how people perceive the value of a bike sharing system and how often people using a bicycle are dependent on their environmental concern. In conclusion, authors discuss how PBS could be promoted sustainably by suggesting policy strategies to enhance the perceived value of PBS and to increase bicycle use.     

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.     

An empirical analysis of dockless bike-sharing utilization and its explanatory factors: Case study from Shanghai,China

Revealing dockless bike-sharing utilization pattern and its explanatory factors are essential for urban planners and operators to improve the utilization and turnover of public bikes. This study explores the dockless bike-sharing utilization pattern from the perspective of bike using GPS-based bike origin-destination data collected in Shanghai, China. In this paper, utilization patterns are captured by decoupling several spatially cohesive regions with intensive bike use via non-negative matrix factorization. We then measure the utilization efficiency of bikes within each sub-region by calculating Time to booking (ToB) for each bike and explore how the built environment and social-demographic characteristics influence the bike-sharing utilization with ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. The matrix factorization results indicate that the shared bikes mainly serve a certain area instead of the whole city. In addition, the GWR model shows higher explanatory power (Adjusted R² = 0.774) than the OLS regression model (Adjusted R² = 0.520), which suggests a close relationship between bike-sharing utilization and the selected explanatory variables. The coefficients of the GWR model reveal the spatial variations of the linkage between bike-sharing utilization and its explanatory factors across the study area. This study can shed light on understanding the demand and supply of shared bikes for rebalancing and provide support for operators to improve the dockless bike-sharing utilization efficiency.     

Exploring the impact of built environment factors on the use of public bikes at bike stations: Case study in Zhongshan,China

Many countries have implemented public bike systems to promote sustainable public transportation. Despite the rapid development of such systems, few studies have investigated how built environment factors affect the use of public bikes at station level using trip data, taking account of the spatial correlation between nearby stations. Built environment factors are strongly associated with travel demand and play an important role in the success of public bike systems. Using trip data from Zhongshan's public bike system, this paper employed a multiple linear regression model to examine the influence of built environment variables on trip demand as well as on the ratio of demand to supply (D/S) at bike stations. It also considered the spatial correlations of PBS usage between nearby stations, using the spatial weighted matrix. These built environment variables mainly refer to station attributes and accessibility, cycling infrastructure, public transport facilities, and land use characteristics. Generally, we found that both trip demand and the ratio of demand to supply at bike stations were positively influenced by population density, length of bike lanes and branch roads, and diverse land-use types near the station, and were negatively influenced by the distance to city center and the number of other nearby stations. However, public transport facilities do not show a significant impact on both demand and D/S at stations, which might be attributed to local modal split. We also found that the PBS usage at stations is positively associated with usage at nearby stations. Model results also suggest that adding a new station (with empty capacity) within a 300 m catchment of a station to share the capacity of the bike station can improve the demand-supply ratio at the station. Referring to both trip demand models and D/S models, regression fits were quite strong with larger R² for weekdays than for weekends and holidays, and for morning and evening peak hours than for off-peak hours. These quantitative analyses and findings can be beneficial to urban planners and operators to improve the demand and turnover of public bikes at bike stations, and to expand or build public bike systems in the future.     

Exploring travel patterns and trip purposes of dockless bike-sharing by analyzing massive bike-sharing data in Shanghai,China

In recent years, dockless bike-sharing has rapidly emerged in many cities all over the world, which provides a flexible tool for short-distance trips and interchange between different modes of transport. However, new problems have arisen with the fast and extensive development of the dockless bike-sharing system, such as high running expenses, ineffective bike repositioning, parking problems and so on. To improve the operations of the dockless bike-sharing system, this study aims to investigate the travel pattern and trip purpose of the bike-sharing users by combining bike-sharing data and points of interest (POIs). A massive amount of bike-sharing trips was obtained from the Mobike company, which is a bike-sharing operator in China. The POIs surrounding each trip origin and destination were derived from the Gaode Map application programming interface. K-means++ clustering was adopted to investigate dockless bike-sharing travel patterns and trip purpose based on trip records and their surrounding POIs. The clustering results show that on weekdays, bike-sharing trip origin and destination can be divided into five typical groups, i.e., dining, transportation, shopping, work and residential places. Dining is the most popular trip purpose by bike-sharing, followed by the transferring to other transportation modes and shopping. In addition, through understanding the spatial distribution of the bike-sharing usage patterns of five typical activities, strategies for improving the operation of the dockless bike-sharing system are provided.     

Children aged 9-14 living in disadvantaged areas in England: Opportunities and barriers for cycling

The aim of this paper is to take a holistic perspective to explore levels of cycling and opportunities and barriers to increase children’s safer cycling in disadvantaged areas in England. The study was one part of a larger study which explored the factors underlying the high level of road traffic casualties especially among children in the most disadvantaged areas of England and to explore how this impacts on mobility and quality of life. The methods involved a cross sectional survey comprising school based questionnaire surveys with children aged 9-14 and focus groups with parents who had children within this age range. The surveys were conducted in 2007 and the focus groups during 2008. 4286 children completed the survey and eight focus groups were held. Bike ownership (77%) was high, use in previous week moderate (39%) but only 2% cycled to school. Ownership was significantly lower in minority ethnic groups. Despite young children’s strong preference to travel by cycle (30%) than walk or go by car, most parents felt it was too hazardous. It is unlikely that these findings would be any different from the rest of England, however the combination of environmental and social factors may elevate the risks for young cyclists in these areas. This paper concludes that a number of barriers exist to increasing levels of cycling among children living in disadvantaged areas particularly amongst ethnic groups. These barriers could be addressed by environmental modifications to reduce speeds and by reducing the levels of antisocial driving and riding in residential areas and around destinations where children travel, by providing cycle training to improve children’s skills and parent’s confidence, and by providing secure storage facilities for bikes. Until these barriers are addressed it is unlikely that cycling will increase despite the strong preferences children have to travel by bike. Such preferences to cycle provide an opportunity for local authorities to act on.     

Funding for local authority transport and land-use schemes in the UK

This paper focuses on the research activities, findings and planned products of one of the UK EPSRC-funded DISTILLATE (Design and Implementation Support Tools for Integrated Local Land use, Transport and the Environment) projects on the funding of transport and land-use schemes. Research activities have included a literature review, dialogue with local authority case studies and a funding workshop. The research identified and explored a range of barriers to funding, including lack of revenue funding, difficulties in obtaining funding for ‘soft’ schemes, the formation of partnerships and timing-related issues. The research also revealed that the funding system is failing to meet the needs of the current transport policy focus on managing travel demand, rather than being a supply-led process. The key project outputs are described, which include a ‘funding toolkit’ for local authorities, and guidance for funding bodies regarding the barriers faced.     

Investigating the effects of a shared bike for tourism use on the tourist experience and its consequences

ABSTRACT

As public bike-sharing systems have been widely set up in cities around the world, a shared bike for tourism use can enhance tourists’ experience at destinations and lead to tourists’ post-visit evaluations. Thus, this research explores the attributional effects of the value of using shared bikes (namely, instrumental value and affective value) on tourists’ emotional experience (namely, hedonics and perceived uniqueness) as well as on satisfaction and destination loyalty. We obtain a sample of 302 tourists using shared bikes as transport modes during their visits to examine the proposed relationship model. Results show that both instrumental and affective values of shared bike use positively relate to hedonics and perceived uniqueness experiences. While both hedonics and perceived uniqueness have positive effects on satisfaction, only perceived uniqueness shows a positive effect on destination loyalty. The findings of multi-group analyses indicate that the direct effects of the tourism experience on destination loyalty are significantly positive for the low-motivation group but not for the high-motivation group. Empirical implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed herein.     

Hot or not? The role of cycling in ASEAN megacities: Case studies of Bangkok and Manila

The Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) recognizes the role of nonmotorized transport for sustainable urban development in its policy framework. National and local policymakers in Thailand and The Philippines, two tropical countries without a tradition of urban cycling, are increasingly paying attention to cycling as well. This article aims to assess the current situation and progress in cycling, using Bangkok and Metropolitan Manila as case study cities, and to describe the necessary conditions for advancing the significance of cycling in tropical megacities. This is done by operationalizing the so-called Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) framework, which has been used in transition studies since 2008, however, never for cycling. As such this article also “tests” this framework for its application in sustainable transportation. The two case studies are characterized with regards to the current role of cycling in the mobility system, its infrastructure, governance system, and existing research on the potential and barriers. We find that TIS can readily be applied to our cases, with the analysis showing that elements such as knowledge development, actor networks, e-bike adoption, infrastructure, resource mobilization and legitimation are not well developed; on the other hand, flat terrain, attention for cycling for health and environment, heavy congestion, expansion of public transport, growing bike industry, active university communities, and the emergence of advocacy coalitions, could open up opportunities for increasing its modal share.     

Recreational bicycling as a “gateway” to utility bicycling: The case of Charlotte,NC

Riding a bicycle for utility purposes in US cities is rare, especially in historically automobile-dominated cities. Using data from a transportation survey administered to 406 residents of Charlotte, NC, this paper reports on the results of a logistic regression model that predicts the influence of an individual's recreational cycling frequency on the odds of that individual riding a bicycle for utility purposes on a weekly basis. The odds of an individual riding for utility purposes at least once a week increases dramatically as an individual rides more for recreation. Recreational cycling appears to offer a space in which individuals can acquire a threshold level of skills and materials necessary to ride their bike for utility purposes. Results suggest that plans to increase utility cycling in an automobile-dominated city like Charlotte ought to emphasize and fund opportunities for residents to ride recreationally, and consider how experience riding a bike in the temporally- and spatially- flexible context of recreation can encourage more individuals to ride to and from errands, school, or their place of work.     

Perspectives and images of cycling as a barrier or facilitator of cycling

The public images of cycling can act as barriers or facilitators of cycling. This qualitative study explored images and perceptions of cycling, their potential influence on cycling and whether these views differed between regular, occasional and non-riders.Seventy participants (24 males and 46 females) were recruited. Of these, 22 were classified as non-riders, 23 were occasional riders and 25 were regular riders. Twelve focus groups were held in inner Sydney during October and November 2005. Data were audio taped, transcribed and thematically analysed.Themes linked to images of cycling included: ‘clean and green’; ‘healthy and fun’; ‘dangerous’ and ‘serious business’. Themes linked to images of cyclists included: ‘risk takers and law breakers’ and ‘status and sub-cultures’. Discussion centred on the low social status of riding over other transport modes, the relative acceptability of different riding sub-cultures, the ‘green’ image of cycling transport and the status associated with the riders clothing and bicycle choice, especially lycra and its ‘serious and sporty’ connotation.While ‘cycling’ was generally viewed as a positive, environmentally friendly activity, the actions of some ‘cyclists’ were disliked, which influenced views about cycling, particularly among non-riders. A cycling acceptability hierarchy emerged; with recreational riding at the top, followed by cycling for sport and exercise, with transport/commuter cycling towards the bottom. Bicycle couriers were viewed least favourably. A common perception among non-riders was the latter two groups were rule breakers and risk takers, while regular riders felt unfairly judged by this stereotype.While there was greater acceptance of recreational riding, riding for transport was not viewed as a mainstream activity. There is a need to improve the public acceptability of cycling and change public norms so it is seen as an everyday activity that can be undertaken by almost anyone, without the need for special clothing, expensive equipment or limited to purpose built facilities.