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.     

Docked vs. dockless equity: Comparing three micromobility service geographies

Docked bike-share programs have proliferated worldwide, but studies find that the distribution of docked stations is geographically unequal. New dockless systems offer more flexibility compared to docked systems, but it remains unclear if dockless systems can address existing geographic inequities. This study examines all 32 US cities with both docked and dockless micromobility (bikeshare and e-scooter) programs and develops three service geography indicators to compare the geographic equity of docked versus dockless systems. We first use Lorenz curves and Gini indices to examine the overall spatial distribution of micromobility; we then use logistic and Tobit regressions to investigate how service geography corresponds to neighborhood characteristics. Results show that the distribution of docked systems is extremely unequal, and that dockless systems greatly reduce geographical inequalities relative to docked. Low-density areas and neighborhoods with low median household incomes, smaller shares of young people, and fewer zero-car households have limited micromobility service. Docked services are less prevalent in communities of color, and the implementation of dockless systems yields mixed outcomes for racial equity. Importantly, designated service areas do not always translate into available micromobility vehicles. Policymakers should use program design and performance metrics to address the mismatch between designated and actual service geographies and to ensure that micromobility services benefit marginalized communities.     

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.     

Exploring the spatial variations of transfer distances between dockless bike-sharing systems and metros

Dockless bike-sharing is emerging as a convenient transfer mode for metros. The riding distances of bike-sharing to or from metro stations are defined as transfer distances between dockless bike-sharing systems and metros, which determine the service coverages of metro stations. However, the transfer distances have rarely been studied and they may vary from station to station. Therefore, this study aims to explore the influencing factors and spatial variations of transfer distances between dockless bike-sharing systems and metros. First, a catchment method was proposed to identify bike-sharing transfer trips. Then, the Mobike trip data, metro smartcard data, and built environment data in Shanghai were utilized to calculate the transfer distances and travel-related and built environment variables. Next, a multicollinearity test, stepwise regression, and spatial autocorrelation test were conducted to select the best explanatory variables. Finally, a geographically weighted regression model was adopted to examine the spatially varying relationships between the 85th percentile transfer distances and selected explanatory variables at different metro stations. The results show that the transfer distances are correlated with the daily metro ridership, daily bike-sharing ridership, population density, parking lot density, footway density, percentage of tourism attraction, distance from CBD, and bus stop density around metro stations. Besides, the effects of the explanatory variables on transfer distances vary across space. Generally, most variables have greater effects on transfer distances in the city suburbs. This study can help governments and operators expand the service coverage of metro stations and facilitate the integration of dockless bike-sharing and metros.     

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.     

From Mobike to no bike in Greater Manchester: Using the capabilities approach to explore Europe's first wave of dockless bike share

Globally, bike share schemes are an element of a rapidly changing urban transport landscape. Whilst many docked schemes are now embedded in cities around the world, the recent explosion of dockless systems provides an opportunity to evaluate claims that this form of shared mobility has the potential to alleviate common barriers to cycling, relieve congestion, boost low carbon travel, get people active, and reduce social exclusion. Drawing on a mixed methods study of 2270 online survey respondents and 27 interviews, all living in, working in or visiting Greater Manchester during a trial of dockless bike share, we explore the ways in which the technological, spatial and practical configuration of bike share schemes relate to a city's infrastructure and existing cycling practices. We question assertions that bike share provision necessarily results in increased rates of cycling and enhanced social inclusion.By using a capabilities approach and utlilising the concept of ‘conversion factors’ to describe the differing capacities or opportunities that people have to convert resources at their disposal into ‘capabilities’ or ‘functionings’, we show how the practice of bike sharing can influence a population's propensity to cycle, as well as how bike share interacts with established barriers to cycling. We find that many established barriers to cycling remain relevant, especially environmental factors, and that bike share creates its own additional challenges.We conclude that bike share operators must recognise the role of personal and social conversion factors more explicitly and be sensitive to the social and physical geography of cities, rather than assuming that a ‘one size fits all’ approach is adequate. To do this they should engage more closely with existing bodies, including transport authorities and local authorities, in co-creating bike share systems. Using the capabilities approach enables us to identify ways in which it could be made relevant and accessible to a more diverse population.     

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.     

Spatial and temporal analysis of bike-sharing use in Cologne taking into account a public transit disruption

This research analyzes the relationship between bike-sharing and public transit using bike-sharing data collected in Cologne, Germany. The selected system is one of very few in Germany that is organized as a free-floating system, which allows the generation of more detailed data. A construction site in the light rail network causing multiple disruptions in the public transit network offered the possibility to detect changes in bike-sharing usage that occur in the corresponding period. Applying negative binomial regression, spatial and temporal usage patterns are analyzed to identify connections to the public transit network and other factors influencing the usage of bike sharing. The analysis suggests the existence of a spatial relationship between bike-sharing and public transit. Therefore, an intermodal use of both means of transport can be assumed. The short-term changes in the public transit network caused by the construction site only have minor impacts on the usage patterns. Other factors that affect the usage structures could be identified. Proximity to universities as well as the number of certain points of interest nearby, such as food outlets and shops, promote bike-sharing use. Higher temperatures are also positively correlated, while rain reduces usage. The findings of the study can be beneficial to integrate bike-sharing into urban transport systems, especially regarding public transit.     

Global air travel: toward concentration or dispersal?

The geography of airline passenger movement through the major cities of the world has changed between 1990 and 2000. The change has been at the expense of the very large global cities and major hubs in favour of a group of next largest cities. It has been detected by comparing the shares of total passenger movement through cities in two separate ways, and by exploring changes in the connectivity between cities over a similar time period. The new pattern reflects the use of new aircraft technology, changes in the location of demand for air travel associated with a broadening in the global linkages between cities, new regulatory arrangements and airline corporate strategies. The implications are that the pressures for airport planning will be felt in a new set of cities, although because the share of passenger traffic through the very large global cities is still high they will remain a major focus for airport planning and management action in the immediate future.     

Modeling bike-sharing demand using a regression model with spatially varying coefficients

As an emerging mobility service, bike-sharing has become increasingly popular around the world. A critical question in planning and designing bike-sharing services is to know how different factors, such as land-use and built environment, affect bike-sharing demand. Most research investigated this problem from a holistic view using regression models, where assume the factor coefficients are spatially homogeneous. However, ignoring the local spatial effects of different factors is not tally with facts. Therefore, we develop a regression model with spatially varying coefficients to investigate how land use, social-demographic, and transportation infrastructure affect the bike-sharing demand at different stations to address this problem. Unlike existing geographically weighted models, we define station-specific regression and use a graph structure to encourage nearby stations to have similar coefficients. Using the bike-sharing data from the BIXI service in Montreal, we showcase the spatially varying patterns in the regression coefficients and highlight more sensitive areas to the marginal change of a specific factor. The proposed model also exhibits superior out-of-sample prediction power compared with traditional machine learning models and geostatistical models.     

The impacts of high-speed rail extensions on accessibility and spatial equity changes in South Korea from 2004 to 2018

The construction of South Korean High-Speed Rail (HSR) or Korea Train eXpress (KTX) has been evolving in phases since its first operation in 2004. This development raises concerns whether the benefits from the extended HSR network would again be limited to the initial HSR corridors and will deepen the inequalities in accessibility with the rising issue of uneven regional development of the country. This paper measures the accessibility of each stage of HSR network extension and evaluates its spatial distribution, variation, and changes using weighted averaged travel time and potential accessibility indicators. The results of this study find different accessibility impacts from each stage of HSR extension. Although travel-time reduction and increased attractions have been widened in more cities by each HSR extension, the spatial equity is degenerated by the extension in 2010/2011 as the improvement of accessibility has been concentrated in cities along the primary HSR corridor near the already-advantageous Seoul capital area. In contrast, the future HSR extension in 2018 will enhance equitable accessibility to the isolated regions such as the northeast and the southwest regions of the country. However, the relative degree of accessibility improvement will not be large enough for increasing the spatial equity of accessibility without more extended HSR networks between provinces.     

The interplay between dockless bikeshare and bus for small-size cities in the US: A case study of Ithaca

As another mode of shared transportation, bikeshare can substitute or complement public transit. Prior studies mainly relied on self-reported survey data or aggregated station-level data from docked bikeshare systems, and their conclusions and implications were focused on large cities. It is largely unknown how and to what extent a dockless bikeshare system complements or substitutes public transit, especially in small cities. This study was set to measure the interplay between Lime dockless bikeshare and bus service in Ithaca, NY – a typical small-size college town – and its environs. By joining about 3.42 million records of bus stop data and 102 thousand Lime bikeshare trip data from 2019, two types of Bikeshare-Bus-Linkage (BBL) trips were identified, namely (1) the first-mile trip where a user rides a Lime to board a bus, and (2) the last-mile trip where a user bikes to their destination after alighting a bus. BBL trips were identified using a spatiotemporal proximity framework based on two important parameters: the catchment radius and the time window between a bus stop event and a Lime trip. Different values were tested with a sensitivity analysis, and the parameters were finally set at 100 ft. and 5 min. As such, 3026 BBL trips were identified, which was 3% of total Lime ridership or 0.1% of total bus ridership. Our findings indicated that Lime provided useful first- and last-mile transfers to bus service for commuters. The complementary effect was particularly strong in the urban core and with transit development and employment land use areas. Moreover, in the morning peak, there were more first-mile trips from residential areas to bus stops in the urban core, while in the evening peak more last-mile trips started from bus stops in the urban core to residential areas. Based on the unique first-mile and last-mile trip patterns identified, policy implications and recommendations for bikeshare operators, local government, transit agencies, and transportation policymakers were discussed to better integrate bikeshare and public transit.     

Inter-urban competition and air transport in the deregulated era: The Nashville case

American cities are acting in a competitive environment as a result of forces like economic restructuring, capital mobility, and state devolution. Since the late 1970s, the federal government has dismantled the spatial boundaries of investment through the deregulation of several important sectors of the economy, including the airline industry. Transportation geographers have investigated how deregulation allowed airlines to develop a hub-and-spoke system. However, post-deregulation airline development has yet to be approached from the perspective of urban entrepreneurialism. Another layer of inter-urban competition has been added through new geographical patterns of airline investment, and capturing hub status through airport development may be especially valuable for mid-size cities. Most large cities have hub status, while small cities have no realistic chance of becoming major players in the air transportation network, thus making the hub an opportunity for mid-size cities. A case study of Nashville, Tennessee illuminates the strong local emphasis on airport expansion in the deregulated environment. Local business and government have been active and innovative, although not always successful, in policies that improve Nashville’s accessibility and position in the urban hierarchy.     

An approach to imputing destination activities for inclusion in measures of bicycle accessibility

This paper proposes a new method to estimate bicycle accessibility for various trip purposes based on a massive dockless bike-sharing dataset in Shanghai, China. Specifically, a Dirichlet multinomial regression topic model (DMR model) is applied to identify bicycle trajectories' trip purposes, simultaneously considering arrival time and drop-off location. Based on obtained trip purposes, we estimate impedance functions using a negative exponential function. Finally, based on estimated impedance functions, two cases of bicycle accessibility for two different purposes - restaurant and hospital - are presented in Shanghais central area. The results show that almost 90% of bicycle trips are less than 30 min or 5 km. Although the difference between the impedance functions between various trip purposes is not significant, we find that trip purposes of “Work and School” have the highest travel impedance for bicyclists. Cyclists in Shanghai accept longer bicycle travel times for leisure (e.g., shopping) than for commuting (e.g., work or school).     

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.     

Exploratory Space–time Analysis of Inbound Tourism Flows to China Cities

The integration of space and time generates much closer interactions between geography and other social sciences in general while providing new perspectives for the role of geography in tourism flow studies. This paper aims to apply exploratory space–time analysis to provide insights into inbound tourism flow patterns in China's cities over the period of 2000–2009 using city‐level Geographical Information System datasets. First, this paper ascertains that there exists geographic neighborhood effect at city level by testifying significantly positive spatial autocorrelation. The hot spots and temporal stability are identified. The hot spots are locally concentrated in metropolitan areas. Local Markov matrix has also shown significant transitions with negative or positive influence of geographic neighbors upon a city. Specifically, three‐dimensional surface is created to visualize tourism flows. The spatial inequalities have the pattern of ‘the east more dense than the west, the south more dense than the north’. There simultaneously exist spatial agglomeration and spatial dispersion. The intensity of spatial agglomeration has become stronger. At the same time, smaller peaks of tourism flow centers developed around the main cities and spread toward surrounding cities. These potential tourism flow centers have gradually emerged and grown larger. Furthermore, the space–time covariance matrix uncovers correlation, which shows strong regional integration over years. Eight hundred and ninety links are identified and visualized. Two hundred and sixty nine links forming 10 spatial clusters represent strong positive correlation. One hundred and thirty‐four links are negative correlation, which is about 15.06 per cent of all links. In conclusion, our comprehensive evidences offer deeper insights and have important policy implications. These enable the tourism‐oriented governmental agencies, as well as the tourism industry professionals, to better understand the changes of inbound tourism flows in China's cities and relevant tourism partners/competitors for cities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Space-time demand cube for spatial-temporal coverage optimization model of shared bicycle system: A study using big bike GPS data

As a sustainable transport mode, bicycle sharing is increasingly popular and the number of bike-sharing services has grown significantly worldwide in recent years. The locational configuration of bike-sharing stations is a basic issue and an accurate assessment of demand for service is a fundamental element in location modeling. However, demand in conventional location-based models is often treated as temporally invariant or originated from spatially fixed population centers. The neglect of the temporal and spatial dynamics in current demand representations may lead to considerable discrepancies between actual and modeled demand, which may in turn lead to solutions that are far from optimal. Bike demand distribution varies in space and time in a highly complex manner due to the complexity of urban travel. To generate better results, this study proposed a space-time demand cube framework to represent and capture the fine-grained spatiotemporal variations in bike demand using a large shared bicycle GPS dataset in the “China Optics Valley” in Wuhan, China. Then, a more spatially and temporally accurate coverage model that maximizes the space-time demand coverage and minimizes the distance between riders and bike stations is built for facilitating bike stations location optimization. The results show that the space-time demand cube framework can finely represent the spatiotemporal dynamics of user demand. Compared with conventional models, the proposed model can better cover the dynamic needs of users and yields ‘better’ configuration in meeting real-world bike riding needs.     

Contested values in bike-sharing mobilities – A case study from Sweden

The aim of this paper is to analyse the type of mobilities and subjects that are being promoted and constituted through bike-sharing systems. This is done through an analysis of the bike-sharing system in the city of Lund in Sweden. The analysis utilises Bacchi's What is the Problem Represented to be? framework and develops it through adding a spatial perspective. Departing from a critical velomobilities perspective, we argue that urban transport policies cannot merely be regarded as one specific and delimited reaction to well-defined policy problems. Instead, the ways that BSSs are, described, motivated – but also spatially organised – constitute which mobilities are produced. The analysis is based in an analysis of relevant policy documents, maps and observations. It is concluded that bike sharing is not seen as cycling and is rarely linked to cycling as such, but rather is seen as part of the public transport system. Further, it is concluded that the motivation behind the location of the stations is to facilitate the flow of workers to public transport, and promote attractiveness and tourism, thus constituting a strong belief in a win-win situation between sustainability and growth. Here prioritisation between different values, and the possible tensions between different social and environmental dimensions of sustainability is down-played.     

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.