Operating Characteristics of a Public Bicycle-Sharing System Based on the Status of Stations: Case Study in Nanning City, China
Since the initiation of the Public Bicycle Sharing (PBS) system, imbalances in the distribution of bicycles have been observed as a common issue. To alleviate this problem, it is necessary to learn the operating characteristics of the system.This paper focuses on the PBS system in Nanning, a medium-sized city in China, and the imbalance in its usage distribution. The authors present an extensive analysis of station data collected from the system’s website to visualise the typical PBS-use behaviours in this city. With global,and spatio-temporal, patterns, the authors find that peak use occurs later on weekdays and people make more trips on weekend evenings compared with other large cities.The clustering results indicate that station activity patterns could be categorised into three groups based on their load factor variation over time: these are flat, convex,and concave on weekdays.Clusters of stations form certain distribution patterns in geographic space. Through Ward methods and analysis of variance (ANOVA), an obvious relationship between urban morphology and load factor variation patterns on weekdays was found; however, no reasonable distribution, or relationship,can be found on weekends due to the stochastic characteristics of the usage of public bicycles. The authors believe that this conclusion has direct implications for the design and operation of the PBS system in Nanning and that it can enhance the level of service and increase user satisfaction. In addition, it will benefit PBS systems in other similar cities
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE90 Standing Committee on Transportation in the Developing Countries.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Tao, Tao
- Guo, Xiucheng
- Li, Jiabin
- Huang, Yantao
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 17p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Analysis of variance; Bicycle travel; Bicycles; Case studies; Cluster analysis; Data mining; Vehicle sharing
- Uncontrolled Terms: Activity patterns; Bicycle sharing stations
- Geographic Terms: Nanning (China)
- Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Terminals and Facilities;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01623090
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-02789
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Jan 24 2017 3:15PM