Between Smart Cities Infrastructure and Intention: Mapping the Relationship Between Urban Barriers and Bike-Sharing Usage

Abstract

Highlights: What are the main findings? Four distinct categories of urban barriers significantly affect bike-sharing usage: infrastructure deficits, environmental/personal constraints, spatial conflicts, and service accessibility issues. Two dominant user motivations for bike-sharing—recreational and functional—were identified and statistically linked to specific barrier types through multidimensional modeling What is the implication of the main finding? Effective bike-sharing policy requires differentiated interventions tailored to diverse user needs and barrier profiles. Integrating user feedback and open innovation approaches can enhance system inclusivity, adaptability, and long-term urban mobility planning. Society’s adaptation to shared mobility services is a growing topic that requires detailed understanding of the local circumstances of potential and current users. This paper focuses on analyzing barriers to the adoption of urban bike-sharing systems in post-industrial cities, using a case study of the Silesian agglomeration in Poland. Methodologically, the article integrates quantitative survey methods with multivariate statistical analysis to analyze the demographic, socioeconomic, and motivational factors that underline the adoption of shared micromobility. The study highlights a detailed segmentation of users by income, age, professional status, and gender, as well as the observation of profound disparities in access and perceived usefulness. Of note is the study’s identification of a highly concentrated segment of young, low-income users (mostly students), which largely accounts for the general perception of economic and infrastructural barriers. These include the use of factor analysis and regression to plot the interaction patterns between individual user characteristics and certain system-level constraints, such as cost, infrastructure coverage, weather, and health. The study’s findings prioritize problem-specific interventions in urban mobility planning: bridging equity gaps between user groups. This research contributes to the current literature by providing detailed insights into the heterogeneity of user mobility behavior, offering evidence-based recommendations for inclusive and adaptive options for shared transportation infrastructure in a changing urban context.