Designing a User Participation-Based Bike Rebalancing Service

Abstract

The Bicycle-sharing System (BSS) has been globally adopted as a sustainable transportation system that helps improve air pollution, public health and traffic congestion. The increased usage of BSSs requires an increased number of rebalancing trucks to distribute bikes throughout the city. Operating rebalancing trucks is an expensive venture that requires intensive manpower that is dependent on traffic congestion. In this background, a user participation-based rebalancing service was introduced to solve the problem, but it was difficult to test the impact of the service and the estimated cost in the city. Thus, this research proposes a simulation system that tests user participation-based rebalancing services with different user parameters such as the amount of incentives, the user participation rate and extra walking distances. We conducted an incentive survey on actual BSS users to determine the accurate values of these parameters. We also identified that, among the three parameters, extra walking distance is the most influential element on which to improve the rebalance imbalance metric. We found that the incentive coefficient is an important variable in determining the estimated cost of the service. Thus, any city can utilize the proposed system to design a user participation-based rebalancing service that is suitable for their city.