A Markov Chain Based Demand Prediction Model for Stations in Bike Sharing Systems

Abstract

Accurate transfer demand prediction at bike stations is the key to develop balancing solutions to address the overutilization or underutilization problem often occurring in bike sharing system. At the same time, station transfer demand prediction is helpful to bike station layout and optimization of the number of public bikes within the station. Traditional traffic demand prediction methods, such as gravity model, cannot be easily adapted to the problem of forecasting bike station transfer demand due to the difficulty in defining impedance and distinct characteristics of bike stations (Xu et al. 2013). Therefore, this paper proposes a prediction method based on Markov chain model. The proposed model is evaluated based on field data collected from Zhongshan City bike sharing system. The daily production and attraction of stations are forecasted. The experimental results show that the model of this paper performs higher forecasting accuracy and better generalization ability.