Supporting the strategic design of public bicycle sharing systems: The experience of a large Mexican city

Abstract

Public bike sharing systems (BSS) comprise fleets of bicycles available for shared use at a low cost. BSS are gaining popularity as an environmentally friendly mode of transportation; however, their design entails critical decisions from transportation planners and public authorities. The objective of this study was to design a BSS for a large Mexican city considering the available budget, the fulfillment of a desired percentage of the predicted demand, the integration of the BSS to the existent public transportation network and the potential environmental benefit of substituting motorized transportation with cycling. A bi-objective optimization model with two objectives -minimize the total cost of the system's implementation and maximize the reduction of CO2 emissions- is formulated and solved to determine the optimal location of bike stations and size of the bicycle fleet required to achieve a specific level of service. The analysis of the non-dominated solutions allows the identification of alternative designs that enhance the BSS' level of service and its contribution to air quality, provided municipal authorities are willing to make tradeoffs between the two objectives and approve a larger investment.