Feasibility Study of Transferring Shared Bicycle Users with Commuting Demand to Flex-Route Transit—A Case Study of Nanjing City, China

Jin Zhang, Wenquan Li, Guoqing Wang and Jingcai Yu
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Jin Zhang: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Wenquan Li: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Guoqing Wang: China Design Group Co., Ltd., Nanjing 210014, China
Jingcai Yu: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-21

Abstract: Shared bicycle users with commuting purposes generally need to take a traditional public transit and then use the shared bicycle to complete the first/last mile transport. While shared bicycle provides convenient travel for travelers, it also brings a series of problems such as disorderly parking and road occupancy. Therefore, exploring the problem of travel mode shift between shared bicycle and public transit is of significance for improving the traffic environment and increasing the sharing rate of public transit. This paper introduces the flex-route transit system and quantitatively analyzes the rationality and feasibility of using flex-route transit to pick up and drop off shared bicycle users with commuting demand from the temporal perspectives. A flex-route transit route design model is established with the objective of minimizing the sum of vehicle driving time cost and passenger time cost, and the time cost models of the shared bicycle commuting system and the flex-route transit system are constructed, compared, and analyzed to explore the feasibility of flex-route transit picking up or dropping off shared bicycle users under different conditions. Through the subsequent sensitivity analysis, the influence of passenger demand density, fixed station spacing, and travel preference attributed to the two systems are analyzed separately. The results demonstrate that the flex-route transit can efficiently complete the picking up or dropping off for shared bicycle users under certain conditions.

Keywords: flex-route transit; shared bicycle; commuting; travel mode shift; route design model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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