Bike sharing systems have grown in popularity around the world, with rental bikes a feature of most large cities today.  New research from Cornell University suggests that the promise of transforming the urban transformation landscape has not been realized, due in large part to an excessive focus on the design of the bikes rather than the location of stations.

“Almost 80% of bike-share usage comes from areas within 1,000 feet of the stations, or roughly four city blocks,” the researchers say. “Anything past 1,000 feet, potential users are almost 60% less likely to use a station.”

The researchers gathered data from Paris’ Velib bike sharing system, and they explored the performance of the system along two dimensions.  The first of these was accessibility of the stations, and the second was availability of the bikes themselves.

Availability

The paper highlights two factors that impact availability.  The first of these is whether nearby stations actually have bicycles when the user needs them, which may force the user to look further afield or abandon the idea of using a shared bike altogether.

The second factor surround the belief among users that they will find a bike.  If they aren’t confident of finding a bike at their chosen station, then they’re less likely to consider bike sharing as an option.

“Most users choose to abandon using bike-share,” the researchers explain. “But overall, we find that a 10% increase in bike availability would increase ridership by more than 12%.”

What’s more, the study found that reducing the amount of walking required to find a bike was the most important aspect in determining whether someone used a shared bike scheme.  As such, they believe operators should strive to understand demand such that they can place stations and bikes closer to riders.

They suggest these locations should include supermarkets and other areas of interest rather than public transport facilities, where many stations are located today.