Measuring bicycle ridership seasonality relative to associated factors

Harsh winters experienced in North American present a formidable barrier to promoting sustained year-round bicycle ridership. To mitigate this, many cities and agencies are implementing a growing number of creative methods to increase bicycle ridership, such as educational campaigns, year-round bike-shares, innovative infrastructure and facilities, and economic policies. However, quantitatively measuring the impact of these efforts is difficult without normalizing the "seasonality'' of bicycle ridership. The lack of such quantitative measures is often an obstacle for efforts geared towards increasing bicycle ridership, making justification for such efforts difficult. This paper proposes a framework for measuring seasonality with a model for demand using parametric sinusoidal function to provide a normalized seasonality factor for demand, called alpha. This model is fitted through least-squares optimization, enabling the interpolation of missing data points (e.g. winter closure of bike-share stations). The proposed model and framework is applied to the Bluebike bike-share system in Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville, Massachusetts, analyzing a variety of factors as infrastructure, land use, demographics, and employment statistics. The outcome of this research is a basic framework that can be used for analyzing bicycle seasonality to provide insights for planning, engineering, and decision-making.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Standing Committee on Bicycle Transportation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Fournier, Nicholas
  • Christofa, Eleni
  • Hamin, Mark
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 11p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bicycle travel; Cyclists; Outreach; Seasons; Weather conditions
• Geographic Terms: Boston Metropolitan Area
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01697856
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-05064
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM