Understanding bicycle sharing systems: user and system insights from three cities in North America

A bicycle-sharing system (BSS) is a public transportation service in which bicycles are available for renting within a service area for a short period of time. Many benefits of BSS have led to their growth around the world recently. However, due to the relatively recent adoption of BSS, there is very little research exploring how people consider these systems within the existing transportation alternatives. Further, it is of substantial interest for transportation professionals to identify contributing factors to the BSS demand. The objective of this dissertation is to examine BSS from both system and user perspectives to provide useful insights on how these innovative public systems influence the urban transportation. The BSS analyzed are from three North American cities: Montreal, Chicago, and New York City. Within the systems perspective, the dissertation addresses three research questions. First, the research quantifies the influence of meteorological data, temporal characteristics, bicycle infrastructure, land use and built environment attributes on BSS usage at the station level using multilevel linear mixed modeling approach. Second, the dissertation explores the presence of spatial and temporal correlations across BSS usage dimensions by developing panel spatial error and panel spatial lag models. Finally, the dissertation examines the influence of BSS infrastructure installation decision endogeneity on the "true" impact of BSS infrastructure on BSS usage through the development of a joint multi-level mixed model.In terms of user perspective, the dissertation studies BSS behavior at a trip level to examine bicyclists' destination preferences. Specifically, the decision process involved in identifying destination locations after picking up a bicycle at a BSS station is studied. The analyses are presented in two chapters. First, a random utility maximization approach is developed that assumes an individual who picks up a bicycle at one of the stations makes destination station choice based on a host of attributes including individual's characteristics, time of the day, and destination station attributes. Second, in order to account for BSS trips heterogeneity, an advanced model that probabilistically assigns trips to different segments and estimates segment-specific destination choice models for each segment is proposed. This model can also consider the effect of fixed attributes across destinations such as users or origins attributes in the decision process.The dissertation also investigates the influence of sample size on system and user perspectives models by evaluating the impact of sample size on model estimates, inference measures, and predictive performance. The analyses show that the impact of sample size on parameters estimated is stronger than that of the impact on prediction performance. Overall, the dissertation results present several interesting findings including the distinct travel behavior of annual members compared to users with temporary passes, the use of BSS for the daily commute to and from work, and the distinguished travel patterns for BSS in weekends. The results also highlight the importance of BSS system attributes such as stations' capacity and location.L'objectif principal de cette dissertation est d'examiner les SVLS d'un point de vue systémique, ainsi que de la perspective des usagers, afin de contribuer à notre compréhension de ces systèmes innovateurs, et comment ils influencent nos systèmes de transports urbains. Cette dissertation examine les SVLS de trois villes Nord-Américaines : BIXI à Montréal, au Canada; DIVVY à Chicago, et CitiBike à New York aux États-Unis.D'un point de vue systémique, cette dissertation se penche sur trois questions. Premièrement, ce document quantifie l'influence de données météorologiques, temporelles, d'infrastructure cyclable, de l'utilisation du territoire, et de l'environnement urbain sur l'utilisation des SVLS, à travers l'usage de modèles linéaires multi-niveaux mixtes. Deuxièmement, la présence de corrélations spatio-temporelles dans l'usage des SVLS est investiguée grâce au développement de modèles panels d'erreur spatiale et de délai spatial. Troisième, nous explorons la présence et l'influence de l'endogénéité de la décision d'installer de l'infrastructure de SVLS sur le « véritable » impact de l'infrastructure de SVLS sur l'utilisation des SVLS. En termes de perspective de l'usager, cette dissertation étudie le comportement des SVLS au niveau de trajets individuels afin d'examiner les choix de destination des cyclistes. Spécifiquement, le processus de décision impliqué dans le choix d'une destination après avoir choisi un vélo à une station de SVLS est étudié. Cette dissertation investigue aussi l'influence de la taille des échantillons sur les perspectives d'usager et du système. Spécifiquement, une évaluation systématique de l'impact de la taille des échantillons sur les résultats des modèles, des mesures d'inférence, et la capacité de prédiction est proposée