Bike-sharing systems: User dissatisfaction in the presence of unusable bicycles

Mor Kaspi, Tal Raviv and Michal Tzur

IISE Transactions, 2017, vol. 49, issue 2, 144-158

Abstract: In bike-sharing systems, at any given moment, a certain share of the bicycle fleet is unusable. This phenomenon may significantly affect the quality of service provided to the users. However, to date this matter has not received any attention in the literature. In this article, the users' quality of service is modeled in terms of their satisfaction from the system. We measure user dissatisfaction using a weighted sum of the expected shortages of bicycles and lockers at a single station. The shortages are evaluated as a function of the initial inventory of usable and unusable bicycles at the station. We analyze the convexity of the resulting bivariate function and propose an accurate method for fitting a convex polyhedral function to it. The fitted polyhedral function can later be used in linear optimization models for operational and strategic decision making in bike-sharing systems. Our numerical results demonstrate the significant effect of the presence of unusable bicycles on the level of user dissatisfaction. This emphasizes the need to have accurate real-time information regarding bicycle usability.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0740817X.2016.1224960 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:uiiexx:v:49:y:2017:i:2:p:144-158

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uiie20

DOI: 10.1080/0740817X.2016.1224960

Access Statistics for this article

IISE Transactions is currently edited by Jianjun Shi

More articles in IISE Transactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().