Last-mile travel and bicycle sharing system in small/medium sized cities: user’s preferences investigation using hybrid choice model

Abstract

First and last-mile access to and from public transport stations/stops is a major problem for encouraging public transport use. Bicycle sharing schemes have shown potential to fill this gap. Majority of studies examined the preference for using bicycle sharing schemes for large cities. Consequently, railway operators in the Netherland and Germany have started their own bike sharing schemes. Majority of the studies examined the preferences for using bike share schemes for larger cities. This study analyses the collected stated preference survey data for the use of bicycle sharing scheme for last mile travel, which is recently launched in small/medium sized cities of Belgium. Within this scheme a single docking station is available and users need to return bicycle at the same station. The survey also includes questions on respondents attitudes towards friendliness-to-cycling. The hybrid choice modelling framework is used to investigate preferences of users. Usual explanatory variables such as temperature, rain conditions, distance, rental cost, gender and age are found significant, which confirms the findings of earlier studies. Along with these; last-mile (to home) and an interaction term between rental cost and duration to keep bicycle are found significant, which indicate the negative effects of having a single docking station. Availability of escorting facility from parents/colleague/friends (a more common phenomenon in small/medium cities) also has a negative effect on the use of the examined bike share scheme. Paper also discusses promotional campaigns and marketing efforts according to the obtained results for making such schemes more successful.

What drives the utility of shared transport services for urban travellers? A stated preference survey in German cities

“…Two of the four shared services analysed here, e-scooter-and bikesharing, comprise what is referred to as shared micromobility. Micromobility targets to cover short distance trips as well as the first or last kilometer (Abduljabbar et al, 2021;Adnan et al, 2019;Wu and Kim, 2020). Vehicles used for micromobility are light-weight, small and do not reach speeds of above 45 kph (Abduljabbar et al, 2021).…”

Understanding the relation between travel duration and station choice behavior of cyclists in the metropolitan region of Amsterdam

“…However they expect this synergy to be highly sensitive to shorter cycling distance and less sensitive to longer train distances when compared to car-based mobility practice. Adnan et al (2019) focus their study on public bicycle sharing systems in Belgium where bike sharing was implemented to reduce last-mile travel. In their research, a web-based survey questionnaire was used to gather data on peoples' socio-economic characteristics, travel habits, attitudes towards friendliness-to-cycling and responses to stated preference scenario's.…”

Exploring the Multiscale Relationship between the Built Environment and the Metro-Oriented Dockless Bike-Sharing Usage

“…Since they do not require docking stations, the biggest advantage of dockless bike-sharing is flexibility and convenience compared with the traditional docked bike-sharing system. Previous studies show that the dockless bike-sharing system changes the daily travel mode of urban residents constantly, especially providing an effective solution to the "first and last mile" travel problems for residents [1][2][3]. In addition, cycling is proved to be beneficial to the environment as it can significantly reduce traffic's energy consumption and carbon emissions [4][5][6].…”

“…For example, the Mobike bike-sharing trip data in this study was obtained in 2017, while the POI data was obtained in 2020, which may affect the accuracy of model results. (2) The accuracy of the data needs to be improved. The coordinates of the bike-sharing trip data in this study were decoded by geohash with an accuracy of about 110 m * 150 m. Undoubtedly, there may be bias in identifying the bike-sharing trips connected to the metro station.…”