Life duration of bike sharing systems

Abstract

Many factors have been advanced to predicate the sustainability of bike sharing system (BSS) and bike sharing usage, such as fleet size, number of docking stations, payment type and financial support, but there have been few studies that examine survival duration of BSS’ operation. Therefore, this study investigates the determinants of BSS’ duration, using bike sharing monitoring map and respective annual report data from 106 cities around the world. Three categories of independent variables, namely infrastructural factors, social factors and economic factors are included in the generalised linear model (GLM). The findings indicate that coverage area, system capacity and payment type will affect the sustainability of bike sharing operation. Moreover, financial support and purchasing power parity (PPP) per capital are the distinctive factors that seem to influence the likelihood of success of a BSS. Payment method affects the survivability of a BSS after the system is stable.