Public Bike Share Systems (BSSs) provide bikes as an alternative mode of transportation in cities and regions. They are extremely popular for increasing mobility and access, along with their health, economic, and environmental benefits. They are also used for improving last-mile connectivity near transit stations. BSSs provide bikes for short distance trips at reasonable and affordable prices, without any ownership costs.

Given the proliferation of BSSs in this country, this research explores the equity dimension of docked bike share systems across the U.S. and in the State of New Jersey. As an affordable, healthy and growing mobility alternative, the importance of equity in the planning and implementation of bike share systems cannot be highlighted enough, particularly because of their potential to benefit disadvantaged populations that rely on affordable/alternative modes of travel more than affluent populations. However, past research has consistently found BSSs to provide unequal access to disadvantaged populations. This study builds upon the existing research in the field, identifying best practices used to measure equity, and developing a method to evaluate equity in bike share systems throughout the U.S.

This research analyzes 10 of the largest third generation docked bike share systems in the United States along with 3 docked bike share systems in New Jersey. These bike share systems were carefully selected to reflect diversity in their size and age, and their host region’s size and geography as well as data availability. The selected bike share systems are as follows:

  • Relay Bike Share – Atlanta, GA
  • Blue Bikes (Hubway) – Metro Boston, MA
  • Divvy – Chicago, IL
  • Capital Bikeshare – Metro DC, DC-MD-VA
  • Houston BCycle – Houston, TX
  • CITI Bike – Miami Region, FL
  • CITI Bike – New York City, NY
  • Bay Wheels (Ford GoBike) – Oakland (East Bay), CA
  • BIKETOWN – Portland, OR
  • Bay Wheels (Ford GoBike) – San Francisco, CA
  • Zagster Bike Share – Asbury Park, NJ
  • Hudson Bike Share – Hudson County (Bayonne, Hoboken, North Bergen, Guttenberg, West New York and Weehawken, NJ)
  • CITI Bike – Jersey City, NJ

Read full report: Evaluating Spatial Equity in Bike Share Systems (2019)

New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center. (2019). Evaluating Spatial Equity in Bike Share Systems. Retrieved from https://njbikeped.org/wp-content/uploads/Bike-Share_02-11-2020_sm.pdf

https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-cs30-ad47