Ridership impacts of the introduction of a dockless bike-sharing scheme, a data-driven case study

In recent years, growing concerns over climate change, pollution, congestion and unhealthy lifestyles have contributed to increasing attention to sustainable transport modes such as cycling in general and more particularly the bicycle-transit combination. As part of the policy to promote cycling, bike-sharing programs were introduced in the past decades. The development of smart bicycle locks in combination with the possibilities of smartphones, made a new type of bike-sharing possible, in literature known as dockless, free-floating or fourth generation bike-sharing. In the new dockless, model, users are able to start and end their trip at their origin and destination without having to find a nearby docking station. Compared with traditional bike-sharing programs, dockless bike-sharing systems integrate mobile payment and global positioning system (GPS) tracking into the system; these features greatly increase the ease of use and management of the system.

This paper is set up around a pilot implementation of the dockless bike-sharing system of Mobike in Delft, the Netherlands. Our research deals with what can be learned from this pilot and analyzing the critical success factors for a sustainable bike-sharing system based on the data of the Delft Mobike pilot. The focus of this paper is on the combined bicycle and transit mode. This research is based on an experimental method for collecting operational data from the bikesharing system, being the first research based on trip data of a dockless bike-sharing system in Western Europe.

Find the Cycling Research Board abstract and presentation of Sven Boor: Presentation and ABSTRACT

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