IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v140y2020icp354-371.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bikesharing, equity, and disadvantaged communities: A case study in Chicago

Author

Listed:
  • Qian, Xiaodong
  • Jaller, Miguel

Abstract

Bikeshare systems are rapidly becoming more prevalent in metro and micropolitan areas around the world. However, low-income populations, people of color, and transit-dependent households are not highly representative of the bikeshare user’s profile. Some bikeshare programs in the United States, such as Divvy in Chicago, try to address this equity problem by promoting their systems among low-income communities. Currently, there is limited research estimating bikeshare ridership in these communities and quantitatively analyzing the impacts of financial barriers in disadvantaged areas at the station level. This research fills this gap by analyzing the current utilization of bikeshare systems among disadvantaged populations. The study develops a Negative Binomial regression model to estimate bikeshare ridership using data from Chicago’s bikeshare system. The results show that bikeshare stations in disadvantaged communities generate around two-thirds of the average annual trips across all stations. The employment rate plays an important role in increasing bikeshare ridership, especially for disadvantaged areas. Additionally, the research found that the proportion of trips by annual members is significantly lower in disadvantaged communities than in other areas. However, interestingly, residents in disadvantaged communities tend to make longer bikeshare trips once they are annual members. Their dependence on bikeshare systems may result from accessibility improvement (e.g., work commute by bikeshare). Based on all the findings, we discuss planning implications for more socially inclusive and equitable bikeshare systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Qian, Xiaodong & Jaller, Miguel, 2020. "Bikesharing, equity, and disadvantaged communities: A case study in Chicago," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 354-371.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:140:y:2020:i:c:p:354-371
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2020.07.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856420306479
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tra.2020.07.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goodman, Anna & Cheshire, James, 2014. "Inequalities in the London bicycle sharing system revisited: impacts of extending the scheme to poorer areas but then doubling prices," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 272-279.
    2. Griffin, Greg Phillip & Jiao, Junfeng, 2018. "Crowdsourcing Bike Share Station Locations: Evaluating participation and placement," SocArXiv mtnza, Center for Open Science.
    3. Shaheen, Susan & Guzman, Stacey & Zhang, Hua, 2010. "Bikesharing in Europe, the Americas, and Asia: Past, Present, and Future," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt79v822k5, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    4. Qian, Xiaodong & Niemeier, Deb, 2019. "High impact prioritization of bikeshare program investment to improve disadvantaged communities' access to jobs and essential services," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 52-70.
    5. Shaheen, Susan A & Guzman, Stacey & Zhang, Hua, 2010. "Bikesharing in Europe, the Americas, and Asia: Past, Present and Future," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt6qg8q6ft, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    6. Fishman, Elliot & Washington, Simon & Haworth, Narelle & Mazzei, Armando, 2014. "Barriers to bikesharing: an analysis from Melbourne and Brisbane," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 325-337.
    7. Wang, Mingshu & Zhou, Xiaolu, 2017. "Bike-sharing systems and congestion: Evidence from US cities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 147-154.
    8. Fishman, Elliot & Washington, Simon & Haworth, Narelle & Watson, Angela, 2015. "Factors influencing bike share membership: An analysis of Melbourne and Brisbane," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 17-30.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qian, Xiaodong & Jaller, Miguel & Niemeier, Debbie, 2020. "Enhancing equitable service level: Which can address better, dockless or dock-based Bikeshare systems?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    2. Alimo, Philip Kofi & Agyeman, Stephen & Danesh, Ali & Yu, Chunhui & Ma, Wanjing, 2023. "Is public bike-sharing feasible in Ghana? Road users' perceptions and policy interventions," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    3. Chen, Qingxin & Fu, Chenyi & Zhu, Ning & Ma, Shoufeng & He, Qiao-Chu, 2023. "A target-based optimization model for bike-sharing systems: From the perspective of service efficiency and equity," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 235-260.
    4. Qian, Xiaodong & Jaller, Miguel & Circella, Giovanni, 2022. "Equitable distribution of bikeshare stations: An optimization approach," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    5. Javad J. C. Aman & Myriam Zakhem & Janille Smith-Colin, 2021. "Towards Equity in Micromobility: Spatial Analysis of Access to Bikes and Scooters amongst Disadvantaged Populations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-15, October.
    6. Saud, Veronica & Thomopoulos, Nikolas, 2021. "Towards inclusive transport landscapes: Re-visualising a Bicycle Sharing Scheme in Santiago Metropolitan Region," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    7. Meng, Si'an & Brown, Anne, 2021. "Docked vs. dockless equity: Comparing three micromobility service geographies," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Jueyu & Lindsey, Greg, 2019. "Do new bike share stations increase member use: A quasi-experimental study," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 1-11.
    2. Qian, Xiaodong, 2019. "Modeling Framework for Socially Inclusive Bikesharing Services," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt4kp5092s, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    3. Kim, Minjun & Cho, Gi-Hyoug, 2021. "Analysis on bike-share ridership for origin-destination pairs: Effects of public transit route characteristics and land-use patterns," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    4. Jain, Taru & Wang, Xinyi & Rose, Geoffrey & Johnson, Marilyn, 2018. "Does the role of a bicycle share system in a city change over time? A longitudinal analysis of casual users and long-term subscribers," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 45-57.
    5. Wang, Jueyu & Lindsey, Greg, 2019. "Neighborhood socio-demographic characteristics and bike share member patterns of use," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Yuanyuan Zhang & Yuming Zhang, 2018. "Associations between Public Transit Usage and Bikesharing Behaviors in The United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-20, June.
    7. Maas, Suzanne & Attard, Maria & Caruana, Mark Anthony, 2020. "Assessing spatial and social dimensions of shared bicycle use in a Southern European island context: The case of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 81-97.
    8. Gu, Tianqi & Kim, Inhi & Currie, Graham, 2019. "To be or not to be dockless: Empirical analysis of dockless bikeshare development in China," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 122-147.
    9. Médard de Chardon, Cyrille & Caruso, Geoffrey & Thomas, Isabelle, 2017. "Bicycle sharing system ‘success’ determinants," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 202-214.
    10. Alexandros Nikitas, 2019. "How to Save Bike-Sharing: An Evidence-Based Survival Toolkit for Policy-Makers and Mobility Providers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-17, June.
    11. Tomasz Bieliński & Łukasz Dopierała & Maciej Tarkowski & Agnieszka Ważna, 2020. "Lessons from Implementing a Metropolitan Electric Bike Sharing System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-21, November.
    12. Zhou, Xiaolu & Wang, Mingshu & Li, Dongying, 2019. "Bike-sharing or taxi? Modeling the choices of travel mode in Chicago using machine learning," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Todd, James & O'Brien, Oliver & Cheshire, James, 2021. "A global comparison of bicycle sharing systems," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    14. Namkung, Ok Stella & Park, Jonghan & Ko, Joonho, 2023. "Public bike users’ annual travel distance: Findings from combined data of user survey and annual rental records," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    15. Wang, Kailai & Akar, Gulsah, 2019. "Gender gap generators for bike share ridership: Evidence from Citi Bike system in New York City," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1-9.
    16. Duran-Rodas, David & Villeneuve, Dominic & Pereira, Francisco C. & Wulfhorst, Gebhard, 2020. "How fair is the allocation of bike-sharing infrastructure? Framework for a qualitative and quantitative spatial fairness assessment," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 299-319.
    17. Conrow, Lindsey & Murray, Alan T. & Fischer, Heather A., 2018. "An optimization approach for equitable bicycle share station siting," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 163-170.
    18. Zheyan Chen & Dea van Lierop & Dick Ettema, 2020. "Exploring Dockless Bikeshare Usage: A Case Study of Beijing, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-18, February.
    19. Audikana, Ander & Ravalet, Emmanuel & Baranger, Virginie & Kaufmann, Vincent, 2017. "Implementing bikesharing systems in small cities: Evidence from the Swiss experience," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 18-28.
    20. Hyungkyoo Kim, 2020. "Seasonal Impacts of Particulate Matter Levels on Bike Sharing in Seoul, South Korea," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-17, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:140:y:2020:i:c:p:354-371. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.