Communications - Scientific Letters of the University of Zilina 2022, 24(2):A53-A65 | DOI: 10.26552/com.C.2022.2.A53-A65

Supply and Demand Analysis of a Free Floating Bike Sharing System

Cristian Poliziani ORCID...1, Joerg Schweizer ORCID...1, Federico Rupi ORCID...1
Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna, Italy
E-mail of corresponding author: cristian.poliziani2@unibo.it

This article presents an analysis of the supply and demand of a FFBSS recently implemented in the city of Bologna, Italy. The main aspects treated in this paper are: analysis of bike availability; temporal analysis of FFBSS demand; calibration and validation of a novel model that predicts the number of daily trips per available bike. This model is based on a linear combination of several day attributes, including meteorological and day-type attributes. Moreover, an origin to destination analysis is generated showing the spatial distribution of FFBSS trips. The methods are applied to a scenario with almost a million GPS traces recorded between July and October 2018 by the FFBSS in Bologna. Findings could support FFBSS companies to better understand the fluctuation of both the transport demand and supply of this relatively recent transport mode, as to make more efficient decisions when distributing or relocating bicycles.

Keywords: bike sharing, free floating, demand prediction, GPS traces, bike re-allocation

Received: September 30, 2021; Accepted: November 16, 2021; Prepublished online: January 20, 2022; Published: April 1, 2022  Show citation

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Poliziani, C., Schweizer, J., & Rupi, F. (2022). Supply and Demand Analysis of a Free Floating Bike Sharing System. Communications - Scientific Letters of the University of Zilina, 24(2), A53-65. doi: 10.26552/com.C.2022.2.A53-A65
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