Bike-share systems hold the potential to reduce traffic and pollution in big cities. While they have received considerable attention, their promise of urban transformation is far from being-fully realized.
New research in the journal Management Science found a key reason is that while companies have focused on bike design and technology aspects, there has been minimal research done on operational aspects such as station density(密度) and bike-availability levels.
"Almost 80%of bike-share usage comes from areas within 1,000 feet of the bike-share stations, or roughly four city blocks," said Elena Belavina, one of the study authors. "Anything past 1,000 feet, potential users are almost 60% less likely to use a station."
The study, "Bike-Share Systems: Accessibility and Availability", analyzes the relationship between ridership and operational performance in bike-share design systems to achieve higher ridership.
Using data from the Velib' system in Paris, with roughly 17,000 bikes and 950 stations, the study estimates the impacts of two aspects of the system performance on bike-share ridership: accessibility, or how far the user must walk to reach stations, and bike availability.
There are two impacts of availability: First, a short-term impact is that if nearby stations do not have bicycles when a user wants to take a trip, users must go to stations farther away or abandon using bike-share. Second, if users typically expect a lower chance of finding a bicycle, they are less likely to even consider bike-share for their trips and the system will have lower ridership in the long term.
"Most users choose to abandon using bike-share." said Belavina. "But overall, we find that a 10%increase in bike availability would increase ridership by more than 12%."
Between increasing bike-availability and decreasing walking distance, the study finds that the latter has a higher impact. Bike-share operators with limited resources must prioritize building more stations close to riders.
Where should those stations go? The authors recommend locations where there are many point s of interest and locations with lower bike availability.