A forthcoming bike-sharing paper in OR

[Wang I-Lin]

Hi,

We have a paper entitled "Models for Effective Deployment and Redistribution of Bicycles Within Public Bicycle-Sharing Systems" by five authors (Shu, Chou, Liu, Teo, and Wang) to appear in Operations Research. Please update your reference list if you have ever cited our previous version as your reference. The article can also be downloaded from

http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/opre.2013.1215

=== Abstract ===

We develop practical operations research models to support decision making in the design and management of public bicycle-sharing systems. We develop a network flow model with proportionality constraints to estimate the flow of bicycles within the network and the number of trips supported, given an initial allocation of bicycles at each station. We also examine the effectiveness of periodic redistribution of bicycles in the network to support greater flow, and the impact on the number of docks needed.

We conduct our numerical analysis using transit data from train operators in Singapore. Given that a substantial proportion of passengers in the train system commute a short distance—more than 16% of passengers alight within two stops from the origin—this forms a latent segment of demand for a bicycle-sharing program. We argue that for a bicycle-sharing system to be most effective for this customer segment, the system must deploy the right number of bicycles at the right places, because this affects the utilization rate of the bicycles and how bicycles circulate within the system. We also identify the appropriate operational environments in which periodic redistribution of bicycles will be most effective for improving system performance.

Key words: bicycle sharing; proportional network flow; simulation

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I-Lin Wang

Associate Professor, Dept of Industrial & Information Management

National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan