Spatio-Temporal Usage Patterns of Dockless Bike-Sharing Service Linking to a Metro Station: A Case Study in Shanghai, China
Journal article, 2020

The dockless bike-sharing (DLBS) system serves as a link between metro stations and travelers' destinations (or originations). This paper aims to uncover spatio-temporal usage patterns of dockless bike-sharing service linking to metro stations for supporting scientific planning and management of the dockless bike-sharing system. A powerful visualization tool was used to analyze the differences in usage patterns in workdays and weekends. The travel distance distributions of using dockless bike-sharing near metro stations were investigated to shed light on the service area of the dockless bike-sharing system. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering was applied to analyze differences in usage patterns of metro stations located in different areas. The results show that the usage patterns of dockless bike-sharing on weekends are different from those on workdays. The average travel distance using the dockless bike-sharing system at weekends is significantly larger than that of workdays. The travel distance distribution could be nicely fitted by the Frechet distribution of the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution family. The usage characteristics of shared bikes are correlated with land use and population density around metro stations. No matter in urban or suburban areas, there is a great demand for bike-sharing in densely populated areas with intensive land development, such as university towns in suburban areas. This study improves the understandings regarding the usage patterns of the DLBS system serving as a link between the final destinations (or originations) and metro stations. The results can be helpful to the operation and demand management of DLBS. © 2020 by the authors.

Hierarchical clustering

Dockless bike-sharing

Usage pattern

Travel distance

Author

Qiang Yan

Tongji University

Kun Gao

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Lijun Sun

Tongji University

Minhua Shao

Tongji University

Sustainability

20711050 (eISSN)

Vol. 12 3 851

Subject Categories

Computer Engineering

Other Computer and Information Science

Transport Systems and Logistics

DOI

10.3390/su12030851

More information

Latest update

2/19/2021