Does docked bike-sharing usage complement or overlap public transport? the case of Brussels, Belgium

ABSTRACT

This paper complements the existing literature on Bike Share Schemes (BSS) by investigating their use from a spatiotemporal perspective to assess their relationship with public transport (PT). We address these questions through the case of Brussels and its long-standing docked BSS ‘Villo!’. Our study analyses comprehensive (consecutive 12 months) and disaggregated (station level) data on rentals and returns and finds that Villo! is used mostly in dense (although not all) districts also well served by PT. However, temporal structures suggest Villo! overtakes PT at night in vibrant districts and possibly in selected districts with lower PT services over weekends. In addition, Villo! stations at key PT hubs usually do not show specific temporal patterns, which suggests intermodality may work at all times during PT operations. There could be an evening peak effect combined with the Brussels’ topography, but this needs to be confirmed by on-site surveys.

KEYWORDS:

• Bike-sharing
• public transport
• spatiotemporal analysis
• principal component analysis

Acknowledgment

Michał Dzięcielski gratefully acknowledge the computational grant from the Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) in Poznań, Poland.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Brussels, the ‘premetro’ is an underground-like infrastructure operated by tramways that ride both underground and in the streets.

2 JCDecaux API, https://developer.jcdecaux.com/#/home (Accessed 22.04.2023).

3 The monthly patterns of Villo! ridership could not be investigated because the period of the investigation was disturbed by post-pandemic recovery and thus increasing usage over time.

4 Mathematically speaking, for each PC the statistical package computes the linear correlation between the supplementary variable and the scores.

5 We argue that the value of a bike is proportionally higher for a poorer household than for a privileged one.

6 This amount is not debited but must be available for the case rules would not be respected.