Cluster Analysis of Public Bike Sharing Systems for Categorization

Tamás Mátrai and János Tóth
Additional contact information
Tamás Mátrai: Department of Transport Technology and Economics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Stoczek utca 2, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary
János Tóth: Department of Transport Technology and Economics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Stoczek utca 2, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 14, 1-15

Abstract: The world population will reach 9.8 billion by 2050, with increased urbanization. Cycling is one of the fastest developing sustainable transport solutions. With the spread of public bike sharing (PBS) systems, it is very important to understand the differences between systems. This article focuses on the clustering of different bike sharing systems around the world. The lack of a comprehensive database about PBS systems in the world does not allow comparing or evaluating them. Therefore, the first step was to gather data about existing systems. The existing systems could be categorized by grouping criterions, and then typical models can be defined. Our assumption was that 90% of the systems could be classified into four clusters. We used clustering techniques and statistical analysis to create these clusters. However, our estimation proved to be too optimistic, therefore, we only used four distinct clusters (public, private, mixed, other) and the results were acceptable. The analysis of the different clusters and the identification of their common features is the next step of this line of research; however, some general characteristics of the proposed clusters are described. The result is a general method that could identify the type of a PBS system.

Keywords: public bike sharing; cluster analysis; categorization; data collection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/14/5501/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/14/5501/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:14:p:5501-:d:381754

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().