Selection Station Locations for a Public Bike-Share Program: A Case Study for the City of Vancouver, B.C.

Authors

  • Mamie Beddis
  • Marko Mitrovic
  • Mayanka Sharma

Abstract

More than 600 cities around the globe have implemented public bike-share programs (PBSPs) and these numbers are continuing to grow. Following the successes of these PBSPs, the city of Vancouver is investigating the possibility of implementing its own system. Since the majority of PBSPs address the last mile problem (i.e. the idea that the last leg of a trip is generally the least efficient), we focus our model on the downtown Vancouver area. The PBSP station location problem is formulated as a deterministic integer programming model, and is solved using CPLEX. Our objective is to maximize the value of a PBSP by optimizing the placement of bike stations. More specifically, our model uses data that provides pedestrian and bike traffic volumes along with popular arrival and departure destinations, such as public transit facilities and tourist attractions, in order to quantify the utility of placing stations in certain locations. In order to strike a balance between convenience for the user and the economic feasibility of the PBSP, this paper also examines the effects of varying the total number of stations to be placed in the system.

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Published

2017-06-07

Issue

Analytics Now 2015-2016 Edition

Section

Articles

License

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