Bike-sharing systems rebalancing considering redistribution proportions: A user-based repositioning approach
Journal article, 2023

Bike-sharing systems have become an indispensable transportation mode due to the environmental friendliness and shareability in the sustainable cities development process. However, the asymmetry of people's travel patterns during the morning and evening rush hours has contributed to the imbalance in bike inventory. Consequently, station rentals and returns require redistribution to address the rebalancing of bikes. In this paper, a user-based repositioning method through a bi-level programming model is proposed. With the objective of minimizing the repositioning workload, the upper-level model yields redistribution proportions that enable the balance between rentals and returns at the station. In addition, aiming at maximum user profit, the lower-level model calculates a redistribution matrix between station pairs and provides recommended stations for users. Finally, three levels of evaluation indicators for the bike-sharing system, operators, and users are presented. The results indicate that the proposed user-based repositioning is remarkably effective in improving the bike inventory balance and the station's turnover rate. This study provides a novel idea for the bike-sharing repositioning problem and contributes to the improvement of urban transportation.

Bike-sharing system

Sustainable transport

Bi-level programming model

Incentivization

User-based repositioning

Author

Yuhan Zhang

Southeast University

Yichang Shao

Southeast University

Hui Bi

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH)

Southeast University

Aoyong Li

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Tsinghua University

Zhirui Ye

Southeast University

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

0378-4371 (ISSN)

Vol. 610 128409

Subject Categories

Other Computer and Information Science

Transport Systems and Logistics

Computer Systems

DOI

10.1016/j.physa.2022.128409

More information

Latest update

1/10/2023