Bike share's impact on car use: evidence from the United States, Great Britain, and Australia

By E. Fishman, S. Washington, N. Haworth. 2014

503 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There are currently more than 700 cities operating bike share programs. Purported benefits of bike share include flexible mobility, physical activity, reduced congestion, emissions and fuel use. Implicit or explicit in the calculation of program benefits are assumptions regarding the modes of travel replaced by bike share journeys. This paper examines the degree to which car trips are replaced by bike share, through an examination of survey and trip data from bike share programs in Melbourne, Brisbane, Washington, D.C., London, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. A secondary and unique component of this analysis examines motor vehicle support services required for bike share fleet rebalancing and maintenance. These two components are then combined to estimate bike share’s overall contribution to changes in vehicle kilometers traveled. The results indicate an estimated reduction in motor vehicle use due to bike share of approx. 90,000 km per annum in Melbourne and Minneapolis/St. Paul and 243,291 km for Washington, D.C. London’s bike share program however recorded an additional 766,341 km in motor vehicle use. This was largely due to a low car mode substitution rate and substantial truck use for rebalancing of bicycles. As bike share programs mature, evaluation of their effectiveness in reducing car use may become increasingly important. Researchers can adapt the analytical approach proposed in this paper to assist in the evaluation of current and future bike share programs.

Subfields: Building and Construction, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/505be4f20a5059b792fffed49d005f9554c67a3f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Building and Construction

1. Miriam. Ricci
2. E. Fishman

In Transportation

1. Miriam. Ricci
2. Yan-jie Ji
3. Yuchuan Jin
4. Xinwei Ma
5. Yu Shen
6. Xiaohu Zhang
7. E. Fishman
8. Jinhuan Zhao

Citations in the corpus

• Understanding the usage of dockless bike sharing in Singapore (2018, background): “Some studies find it improves transit connect and leads to more public transportation usage (Martin & Shaheen, 2014; S. Shaheen, Martin, & Cohen, 2013) while others suspect its efficiency of reducing motor vehicle usage if truck usage for rebalancing is counted (Fishman et al., 2014).”
• Bikeshare: A Review of Recent Literature (2016, methodology): “In an Australian study, almost half (46%) of annual members recorded no trips in the previous month and only 14% use the system everyday (Fishman et al., 2014).”
• Bike sharing: A review of evidence on impacts and processes of implementation and operation (2015, methodology): “Using data fromBSSs in London (UK),Melbourne and Brisbane (Australia), Washington DC and Minnesota in the U.S., Fishman et al. (2014a) examined the net changes to motor vehicle use as a consequence of bike sharing, by looking at substitution rates for car modal share but, crucially, also accounting ”
• The economic contribution of public bike-share to the sustainability and efficient functioning of cities (2017, background): “Various studies (e.g. (Buehler & Hamre, 2014; Faghih-Imani, luru, El-Geneidy, Rabbat, & Haq, 2014, Fishman et al., 2014; Martin Shaheen 2014; Rixey, 2013) have found that savings in journey and Society 28 (2017) 76–87 77 time are a key motivation for use.”
• Exploring Spatially Varying Influences on Metro-Bikeshare Transfer: A Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression Approach (2018, background): “Sharing bicycles can also reduce the usage of motor vehicles, thereby reducing on-road traffic congestion and conserving road space [5–8].”