Life cycle assessment to quantify the impact of technology improvements in bike‐sharing systems

Abstract

The reduced environmental footprint of bicycle sharing systems (BSS) is one of the reasons for their rapid growth in popularity. BSS have evolved technologically, transitioning from smart dock systems to smart bicycle systems, and it is not clear if the increased use of electronics in BSS results in a net environmental benefit. This article provides an evaluation of the impact of incorporating additional technology into BSS and uses that analysis as guidance for future BSS development. By comparing the impacts of a private bicycle, a smart dock BSS, and smart bike BSS using a life cycle assessment (LCA), this work reveals breakeven points and tradeoffs between the technologies. This study is also the first published empirical LCA of a smart bike known to the authors. In the production phase, smart bikes generate approximately three times the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the smart dock bikes per kilometer ridden over the lifetime, and when considering the endpoint categories of human health, ecosystem, and resources, smart bikes have approximately 2.7 times the environmental impact. The results suggest that shifting from smart dock to smart bike requires an increase in ridership by a factor of 1.8 to overcome the increased environmental impact based on the GHG emissions. We find that smart docks become preferable at a population density between 1,030 residents/km2 (in a bike friendly city) and 3,100 residents/km2 (in a city that is less likely to bike).

Environmental performance of shared micromobility and personal alternatives using integrated modal LCA

“…LCIs of the sidewalk life cycle come from a previous study [19] and are recalled in the supplementary material. Each station is equipped with : (a) one e-kiosk (for customers), whose LCIs are adapted and completed from Bonilla-Alicea et al [23] bikes traveling 10 000 km a year, thus an allocation factor of 1/(19000*10000)=5.29E-09 of the annual station impact.…”

Characterizing the stocks, flows, and carbon impact of dockless sharing bikes in China

“…On the other hand, the additional materials use, such as electronics in DSBs and especially the significant amounts of short-lived DSBs in the graveyard due to fierce market competition, could cause an extra impact on resource, waste, and environment. For example, some life cycle analysis (LCA) based studies reveal a higher environmental impact of DSBs than station-based SBP (Bonilla-Alicea et al, 2019;Luo et al, 2019) and breakeven point of its environmental impact in Beijing was calculated as 1.7 years of DSBs use (Chen and Chen, 2018). These abovementioned studies provide an initial assessment of the environmental impacts of DSB development for two sides of the same coin, but a few knowledge gaps remain.…”

Bringing a life cycle perspective to emerging technology development

“…Four papers focus on applications related to the transport and infrastructure research domains. The first applies LCA to investigating the technological improvements experienced over the past several years related to bicycle docking technology and the increased use of electronics in bike sharing applications (Bonilla‐Alicea, Watson, Shen, Tamayo, & Telenko, ). The paper then extends the consideration of future technology changes and the impact that they could have.…”