By Kelsey Walker
Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University
While bike-sharing is typically framed as a means of transportation for weekday commuters, a new analysis of the programs in Austin, Denver, Fort Worth, and Houston indicates that users frequently turn to bike-sharing for recreational purposes in these cities. This finding is critical to our understanding of bike-share programs, which are poised to proliferate and expand in the Sun Belt and elsewhere in the coming years.
As planners, policymakers, and program operators throughout the country develop bike-share systems, they can benefit from a richer understanding of how people use bike-share programs in lower-density, automobile-oriented urban environments. However, despite the rise of bike-sharing systems, comparative studies of bikesharing activity are lacking, particularly for cities in the southern and western United States. To shed light on the role that bike-share systems inhabit in these areas, this study examines bike-sharing trips in Austin, Denver, Fort Worth, and Houston, comparing and visualizing the type and volume of trips in the four cities.
Results
According to the study:
- In Denver and Austin, more than half of users’ trips are weekday two-location trips. Trips of this type are often commuting trips that replace peak-hour trips made by other transportation modes.
- In Fort Worth and Houston, only around one third of trips are weekday two-location trips. The remaining two-thirds of the trips in these cities are round trips or weekend trips, suggesting that these programs cater primarily to recreational users.
- The Austin system generates more two-location trips per kiosk than any of the other three systems in a standard week in January through May.
- The Houston system generates more than twice as many round trips per kiosk than any of the other three systems in a standard week in January through May.
- The overwhelming majority of kiosks in the four cities generate more two-location trips than round trips.
- Round trip activity is concentrated at a handful of kiosks in parks and along trails in the four cities. Many of these kiosks rank among the most heavily-used stations in all four systems.
Social Similarities
Bike-share programs bear an uncanny resemblance to social media platforms.
Just as social media sites open up lines of communication between users, bike-sharing programs provide transportation links between docking stations.
These systems are configured as networks, which means that the number of potential connections increases exponentially as systems grow. For example, a social media platform with 100 users – which lets each of its users contact 99 others – opens up just shy of 10,000 lines of communication. A site with 200 users, meanwhile, opens up around 40,000 lines of communication, as it lets 200 users contact 199 others
The same pattern holds in bike-share programs: a system with twice the docking stations allows users to make four times as many different trips.
The total volume of activity can also increase exponentially, because new social media users and bike-share kiosks positively affect the activity of other users and kiosks. A larger social media platform allows existing users to connect with more friends, relatives, and acquaintances. In other words, the social media platform becomes more useful.
New docking stations, likewise, contribute to the appeal of bike share at every location in the network. When new kiosks get added, prospective riders at existing stations can use bike share to travel to a greater array of destinations.
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