Posts tagged cycling

Travellers’ preferences towards existing and emerging means of access/egress transport

This research elaborates on access/egress transport in further detail and aims to provide insights in the preferences of travellers for existing and new means of access/egress transport such as shared vehicles and on-demand ride services. In this research, a stated preference experiment was performed with Dutch train travellers. In addition to the modal preferences, the expected impacts on land use near train station were assessed.

Find the ETC presentation of Bas Stam HERE

Overview Bicycle+Transit research

Podcast: Bicycle+transit mode

The bicycle+transit combination has been a growing mode for years now. It could offer the best of both worlds, if it is well designed with an integrated perspective. In this Dutch Cycling Embassy podcast with Geert Kloppenburg and Chris Bruntlet, we discuss about the opportunities and challenges regarding shared bicycle systems.

Find the podcast here:
Podcast Bicycle+Transit

Find the related references here:
Insights and overview research findings (lecture slides; Van Oort, 2020)

Shelat et al.(2017); Characteristics bicycle and transit users

Van Mil et al.(2020); Factors affecting the bicycle and transit mode

Ton et al. (2020); Factors catchment areas PT stops

Ma et al.(2020); Shared bicycle impacts on modal shift

Understanding the Modal Shift in Response to Bike-sharing Systems in the City of Delft

The introduction of bike-sharing systems has revitalized cycling in many cities around the world. In general, the bike-sharing systems operated worldwide can be divided into two categories: docked bike-sharing and dockless bike-sharing. In the docked bike-sharing system, users have to rent bicycles from designated docking stations and then return them to the available lockers in the docking stations. The dockless bike-sharing system is designed to provide more freedom and flexibility to travellers in terms of bicycle accessibility. In contrast to docked bike-sharing, riders are free to leave bicycles in both physical and geo-fencing designated parking areas provided in public space with or without bicycle racks.

As a greener travel mode, bike-sharing is competitive in short distance travel and people who have long commuting distance are more likely to choose public transit integration with it. Previous research has shown that bike-sharing reduces car and taxi useage and increases cycling in almost every city. Bike-sharing system has been shown to reduce trip demand of public transportation including train, metro and bus.

In Delft as a student city in the Netherlands, cycling is seen as the most important mode of transport within the city. There exist three different bike-sharing schemes in operations, including OV-fiets, Mobike and Swapfiets. OV-fiets was introduced in the Netherlands in 2003 [4]. The bicycles should always be brought back to the location where the rental started. At this moment, there are almost 300 rental locations consisting of 20500 bicycles. Mobike is a dockless bike-sharing service and is more flexible than the existing docked bike-sharing alternative. Mobike extended the operations to Delft in March 2018 with a focus on the university campus. Swapfiets, launched in 2014, is a bicycle-rental system on a subscription basis, can be used for regular private trips. Now it has over 50,000 customers in 38 cities in Europe. The coexistence of different bike-sharing schemes in Delft enables this city to be a test bed for bike-sharing research.
This paper aims to understand the modal shift dynamics and the factors influence travellers’ choices in response to different bike-sharing systems by conducting a survey targeting OV-fiets users, Mobike users and Swapfiets users and private-bike users.

Find the CRB presentation and abstract of Xinwei Ma: Presentation and ABSTRACT

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

Bicycle and Transit: a Powerful Combination

Cities are facing mobility related problems such as traffic congestion and air pollution. The combination of bicycle and transit offers a sustainable alternative to individual motorized transport. It combines the benefits of both modes, namely speed, flexibility and accessibility. This paper merges several results of our recent studies in this combined mode. The bicycle and transit mode is at first reviewed from a governance point of view. After this top-down approach a shift to the actual bicycle and transit users is made. The objective of this paper is to understand the characteristics of the bicycle-transit combination. Understanding the bicycle-transit chain makes it possible to improve the design of the chain by adapting policies which enhances (further) growth of this sustainable transport mode.

Regarding the governance point of view: two metropolitan areas in the world where both bicycle and transit systems are highly developed are compared. The metropolitan region of Copenhagen and the Dutch Randstad conurbation. In the Netherlands the governance structure of spatial planning and transit planning has gradually been shifted from local and national level to provincial level. Furthermore, many provinces are a key stakeholder when developing so called bicycle highways. The combination of responsibilities for (i) spatial planning, (ii) transit, and (iii) bicycle planning has proven to be extremely successful when making the most out of the bicycle-transit combination. It is seen that the results of the integration of transit and spatial planning highly encourages citizens to use the bicycle and transit mode.
In addition to our policy-related analysis, the actual bicycle and transit user has been examined. It is seen that the current users of the combined mode are mainly middle-aged, male, full-time employees. Catchment areas of transit stops depends on multiple factors. One of these factors is quality of the transit supply. In comparison to low level services, high level services attract users from twice as far. While over 40% of the Dutch train traveller uses the bike to get from home to the station, modal shift might be possible regarding egress trips and from and to high level bus, tram and metro services. Dockless bikes are helpful regarding egress transport. In the city of Delft, approximately 15% of the MoBike dockless bike trips are related to the train stations.
Finally, it is concluded that the combination of bicycle and transit is a successful and sustainable transport combination. Both from a governance and user perspective, there are major opportunities regarding the egress side of the bicycle transit chain. Furthermore, the transition of low level transit to high level transit makes the bicycle-transit combination more attractive, transit authorities are therefore highly encouraged to facilitate bicycle parking and shared bicycle facilities at their transit stops.

Check the ETC presentation with Raymond Huisman HERE

Walking and bicycle catchment areas of tram stops: factors and insights

Pollution and congestion are important issues in urban mobility. These can potentially be solved by multimodal transport, such as the bicycle-transit combination, which
benefits from the flexible aspect of the bicycle and the wider spatial range of public transport. In addition, the bicycle can increase the catchment areas of public transport stops. Most transit operators consider a fixed 400m buffer catchment area. Currently, not much is known about what influences the size of catchment areas, especially for the bicycle as a feeder mode.

Bicycles allow for reaching a further stop in order to avoid a transfer, but it is not clear whether travelers actually do this.This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap by assessing which factors affect feeder distance and feeder mode choice. Data are collected by an on-board transit revealed preference survey among tram travelers in The Hague, The Netherlands. Both regression models and a qualitative analysis are performed to identify the factors that influence feeder distance and feeder mode choice. Results show that the median walking feeder distance is 380m, and the median cycling feeder distance is 1025m. The tram stop density and chosen feeder mode are most important in feeder distance. For feeder mode choice, the following factors are found to be influential: tram stop density, availability of a bicycle, and frequency of cycling of the tram passenger. Furthermore, the motives of respondents for choosing a stop further away are mostly related to the quality of the transit service and comfort matters, of which avoiding a transfer is named most often. In contrast, the motives for cycling relate mostly to travel time reduction and the built environment. Three important barriers for the bicycle-tram combination have been discovered: unavailability of a bicycle, insufficient and unsafe bicycle parking places. Infrequent users of the bicycle-tram combination are more inclined to travel further to a stop that suits them better.

Find the MT-ITS paper and presentation of Lotte Rijsman HERE and HERE

Understanding the difference in travel patterns between docked and dockless bike-sharing systems: a case study in Nanjing, china

The co-existence of dockless and traditional docked bike-sharing systems presents new opportunities for sustainable transportation in cities all over the world, both serving door to door trips and access and egress to and from transit. To compare travel patterns of these two systems, we explored the GPS data of a dockless bike-sharing scheme and the smart card data of a docked bike-sharing scheme in the city of Nanjing, China over the same time period. In order to obtain information from different perspectives, such as user perception and opinions, an intercept survey on bike-sharing mode choice was conducted. A mode choice model was estimated to reveal the effects of personal information, user perception and experience on bike-sharing usage. Results show that dockless bike-sharing systems have a shorter average travel distance and travel time but a higher use frequency and hourly usage volume compared to docked bike-sharing systems. Trips of docked and dockless bike-sharing on workdays are more frequent than those on weekends, especially during the morning and evening rush hours from 7:00-9:00 and 17:00-19:00, respectively. As to the factors influencing travelers’ mode choice, results show that retirees, enterprise staff and users with E-bikes are less likely to use docked sharing-bikes than dockless bikes. In contrast, high-income travelers and people who are highly sensitive to discounts, internet technology and online payment service are more likely to use the dockless bike-sharing. Finally, policy implications are discussed for cities to improve the performance of docked and dockless bike-sharing systems.

Find our poster HERE

Insights into factors affecting the combined bicycle-transit mode

The combination of bicycle and transit is an upcoming, sustainable multimodality. The flexibility of the bicycle combined with the speed and comfort of good transit can be a highly competitive alternative to the car. This study shows that many factors influence the uptake and attractiveness of the bicycle-transit combination. An in-depth literature review resulted in over thirty unique factors: six transit related factors, twenty first-last mile factors and fifteen context related factors. All these factors might influence the demand for this ‘new’ mode positively or negatively. An exploratory choice modelling study showed that Dutch bicycle-train users in our sample are willing to pay €0.11 for a minute less bicycle time, €0.08 for a minute less train time, €0.11 for a minute of less time to park and €0.60 per avoided transfer. These kinds of insights give the bicycle and transit sector valuable information to be used in modelling multimodality and cost-benefit analyses, thereby supporting improved decision making and integrated design of bicycle and transit networks.

Read the full CASPT paper HERE and find the presentation HERE

Opportunities for the Combined Bicycle and Transit Mode

Around the world cities face negative effects generated by increasing mobility needs. To tackle these issues, mobility should be environmental and spatial friendly. Combining bicycle and public transport into a ‘bicycle + transit mode’ will create a synergy with the best of both worlds: superb door-to-door accessibility offered by the bicycle and a large spatial reach from transit modes. These complemented modes combined easily challenge private carsin terms of speed as well accessibility.

Research regarding the users and trip types of the bicycle and transit mode is largely missing. This is unfortunate, since understanding both user and trip characteristics is of the utmost importance to improve the share of the bicycle and transit mode. Policy-makers can make concrete decisions on infrastructure and service investments only when the gap between the aforementioned societal need and scientific knowledge is filled.

The main analysis in the study is based on data from the Netherlands. The Netherlands is one of the countries with a head start regarding the use of the bicycle + transit mode. A one-day trip diary survey, representative of the population of the Netherlands, with more than 250,000 respondents who made nearly 700,000 trips over the course of 6 years (2010-2015), is used to derive important trip and user characteristics of the bicycle + transit mode. Finally, latent class cluster analysis is applied to find prototypical users of this mode on the basis of their socio-demographic attributes.

It is, for example, found that the most important purposes of the bicycle and transit mode are work or education, typically involving relatively long distances. Bicycle and transit-potential for other transit network levels, such as metros and bus rapid transit can be found. Moreover, seven unique user groups – from middle-aged professionals to school children – are identified, and their different travel behaviour is discussed.

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