Journal of Transport and Land Use

Dockless bike-sharing system: Solving the problem of faulty bikes with simultaneous rebalancing operation

Muhammad Usama

Southeast University, Nanjing, China

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4136-2169

Onaira Zahoor

Southeast University

Yongjun Shen

Southeast University, Nanjing, China

Qiong Bao

Southeast University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2020.1594

Keywords: Dockless Bike-Sharing Problem, Faulty Bike Recycling Problem (FBRP), rebalancing, mixed integer programming.

---

Abstract

The Free-Floating Bike-Sharing System (FFBS) enables commuters to pick up and drop off a shared bike without going to a docking station before and after the trip. However, the specific sharing features of the FFBS can also be a problem for users because randomly scattered and faulty bikes within the system can result in bike unavailability and maintenance difficulties. This not only negatively impacts the company’s service quality but also causes user safety issues. In this study, a mechanism for the rebalancing of useable bikes and faulty bikes is presented in two steps: 1) gathering each faulty bike at a station determined by the model traversing the shortest path by light service vehicles; and 2) enabling the rebalancing operation to obtain optimal bike inventory levels at all stations and collect faulty bikes at a depot. The destination station from which each faulty bike is taken is considered a decision variable rather than shifting them to a closer station. The mechanism is based on minimizing the total cost of the rebalancing operation by optimizing the formulated problem, supported by time and capacity constraints. Using CPLEX solver, the validity of the model is tested through different numerical experiments.

---

References

Alvarez-Valdes, R., Belenguer, J. M., Benavent, E., Bermudez, J. D., Muñoz, F., Vercher, E., & Verdejo, F. (2016). Optimizing the level of service quality of a bike-sharing system. Omega, 62, 163–75.

Benchimol, M., Benchimol, P., Chappert, B., de la Taille, A., Laroche, F., Meunier, F., & Robinet, L. (2011). Balancing the stations of a self service ‘bike hire’ system. RAIRO–Operations Research, 45(1), 37–61.

Biehl, A., Ermagun, A., & Stathopoulos, A. (2018). Community mobility MAUP-ing: A socio-spatial investigation of bikeshare demand in Chicago. Journal of Transport Geography, 66, 80–90.

Borgnat, P., Abry, P., Flandrin, P., Robardet, C., Rouquier, J., & Fleury, E. (2010). Shared bicylces in a city: A signal processing and data analysis perspective. doi.10.1142/S0219525911002950

Campbell, C. (2018). The trouble with sharing: China’s bike fever has reached saturation point. Retrieved from http://time.com/5218323/china-bicycles-sharing-economy/

Caulfield, B., O’Mahony, M., Brazil, W., & Weldon, P. (2017). Examining usage patterns of a bike-sharing scheme in a medium-sized city. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 100, 152–61.

Chang, S., Song, R., He, S., & Qiu, G. (2018). Innovative bike-sharing in China: Solving faulty bike-sharing recycling problem. Journal of Advanced Transportation. doi.org/10.1155/2018/4941029

Chemla, D., Meunier, F., & Calvo, R. W. (2013). Bike sharing systems: Solving the static rebalancing problem. Discrete Optimization, 10(2), 120–46.

Chen, J., Li, Z., Wang, W., & Jiang, H. (2018). Evaluating bicycle–vehicle conflicts and delays on urban streets with bike lane and on-street parking. Transportation Letters, 10(1), 1–11.

Contardo, C., Rousseau, L.-M., & Morency, C. (2012). Balancing a dynamic public bike-sharing system, vol. 4. Montreal: CIRRELT, University of Montreal, Laval University.

Corcoran, J., Li, T., Rohde, D., Charles-Edwards, E., & Mateo-Babiano, D. (2014). Spatio-temporal patterns of a public bicycle sharing program: The effect of weather and calendar events. Journal of Transport Geography, 41, 292–305.

Dell’Amico, M., Hadjicostantinou, E., Lori, M., & Novellani, S. (2014). The bike sharing rebalancing problem: Mathematical formulations and benchmark instances. Omega, 45, 7–19.

Du, M., & Cheng, L. (2018). Better understanding the characteristics and influential factors of different travel patterns in free-floating bike sharing: Evidence from Nanjing, China. Sustainability, 10, 1244.

Erdoğan, G., Laporte, G., & Calvo, R. W. (2014). The static bicycle relocation problem with demand intervals. European Journal of Operational Research, 238(2), 451–57.

Fishman, E. (2016). Bikeshare: A review of recent literature. Transport Reviews, 36(1), 92–113.

Gu, T., Kim, I., & Currie, G. (2019). To be or not to be dockless: Empirical analysis of dockless bikeshare development in China. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 119, 122–47.

Guo, Y., Li, Z., Wu, Y., & Xu, C. (2018). Exploring unobserved heterogeneity in bicyclists’ red-light running behaviors at different crossing Facilities. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 115, 118–27.

Ho, S. C., & Szeto, Y. W. (2014). Solving a static repositioning problem in bike-sharing systems using iterated tabu search. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 69, 180–98.

Hui, Z. (2020). Beijing puts brakes on E-bike sharing, restricts total number of for-hire bikes. Retrived from http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1066602.shtml.

Ji, Y., Fan, Y., Ermagun, A., Cao, X., Wang, W., & Das. K. (2016). Public bicycle as a feeder mode to rail transit in China: The role of gender, age, income, trip purpose, and bicycle theft experience. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 11(4), 308–317.

Ji, Y., Ma, X., Yang, M., Jin, Y., & Gao, L. (2018). Exploring spatially varying influences on metro-bikeshare transfer: A geographically weighted poisson regression approach. Sustainability, 10, 1526.

Jiménez, P., Nogal, M., Caulfield, B., & Pilla, F. (2016). Perceptually important points of mobility patterns to characterize bike sharing systems: The Dublin case. Journal of Transport Geography, 54, 228–39.

Kaspi, M., Raviv, T., & Tzur, M. (2016). Detection of unusable bicycles in bike-sharing systems. Omega, 65, 10–16.

Kaspi, M., Raviv, T., & Tzur, M. (2017). Bike-sharing systems: User dissatisfaction in the presence of unusable bicycles. IISE Transactions, 49(2), 144–58.

Kloimüllner, C., Papazek, P., Hu, B., & Raidl, G. R. (2015). A cluster-first route-second approach for balancing bicycle sharing systems. (pp. 439–46). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 9520. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-27340-2_55

Lan, J., Ma, Y., Zhu, D., Mangalagiu, D., & Thornton, T. F. (2017). Enabling value co-creation in the sharing economy: The case of mobike. Sustainability, 9(9), 1504.

Lazo, L. (2018, July 1). Theft and destruction of dockless bikes a growing problem. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/07/01/theft-and-destruction-of-dockless-bikes-a-growing-problem/

Liu, Y., Szeto, W. Y., & Ho, S. C. (2018). A static free-floating bike repositioning problem with multiple heterogeneous vehicles, multiple depots, and multiple visits. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 92(May), 208–42.

Ma, L., Zhang, X., & Wang, G. S. (2017). Identifying the reasons why users in China recommend bike apps. International Journal of Market Research, 59(6), 767–86.

Médard de Chardon, C., & Caruso, G.(2015). Estimating bike-share trips using station level data. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 78, 260-279. doi: 10.1016/j.trb.2015.05.003

Meddin, R., & DeMaio, P. (2019). The bike-sharing world map. Retrieved from www.bikesharingmap.com

Möhlmann, M. (2015). Collaborative consumption: Determinants of satisfaction and the likelihood of using a sharing economy option again. Journal of Consumer Behavior, 14(3), 193–207.

Montoliu, R. (2012). Discovering mobility patterns on bicycle-based public transportation system by using probabilistic topic models. In P Novais, K. Hallenborg, D. Tapia, & J. Rodríguez (Eds.) Ambient intelligence — Software and applications, advances in intelligent and soft computing, vol 153 (pp. 145–53) Springer, Berlin: Springer.

Pal, A., & Zhang, Y. (2017). Free-floating bike sharing: Solving real-life large-scale static rebalancing problems. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 80, 92–116.

Parkes, S. D., Marsden, G., Shaheen, S. A., & Cohen, A. P. (2013). Understanding the diffusion of public bikesharing systems: Evidence from Europe and North America. Journal of Transport Geography, 31, 94–103.

Rainer-Harbach, M., Papazek, P., Hu, B., & Raidl, G. R. (2013). Balancing bicycle sharing systems: A variable neighborhood search approach. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7832, 121–32.

Raviv, T., Tzur, M., & Forma, I. A. (2013). Static repositioning in a bike-sharing system: Models and solution approaches. EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, 2(3), 187–229.

Sarkar, A., Lathia, N., & Mascolo, C. (2015). Comparing cities’ cycling patterns using online shared bicycle maps. Transportation, 42(4), 541–59.

Schuijbroek, J., Hampshire, R. C., & van Hoeve, W. J. (2017). Inventory rebalancing and vehicle routing in bike sharing systems. European Journal of Operational Research, 257(3), 992–1004.

Shaheen, S. A., Guzman, S., & Zhang, H. (2010). Bikesharing in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2143(1), 159–67.

Shaheen, S. A., Zhang, H., Martin, E., & Guzman, S. (2011). China’s Hangzhou public bicycle. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2247(1), 33–41.

Shaheen, S., & Chan, N. (2016). Mobility and the sharing economy: Potential to facilitate the first- and last-mile public transit Connections. Built Environment, 42(4), 573–588.

Shui, C. S., & Szeto, W. Y. (2018). Dynamic green bike repositioning problem–A hybrid rolling horizon artificial bee colony algorithm approach. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 60, 119–36.

Sun, Y. (2018). Sharing and riding: How the dockless bike sharing scheme in China shapes the city. Urban Science, 2(3), 68.

Taylor, A. (2018, March). Bike share oversupply in China: Huge piles of abandoned and broken bicycles. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/#img03

Usama, M., Shen, Y., & Zahoor, O. (2019). Toward an energy efficient solution for bike-sharing rebalancing problems: A battery electric vehicle scenario. Energies, 12(13), 2503.

Usama, M., Zahoor, O., Bao, Q., Liu, Z., & Shen, Y. (2019). Dockless bike-sharing rebalancing problem with simultaneous faulty bike recycling. Proceedings of the 19th COTA International Conference of Transportation Professionals, 4963–4974.

Vogel, P., Greiser, T., & Mattfeld, D. C. (2011). Understanding bike-sharing systems using data mining: Exploring activity patterns. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 20, 514–23.

Wang, C., Xu, C., Xia, J., & Qian, Z. (2017). Modeling faults among e-bike-related fatal crashes in China. Traffic Injury Prevention, 18(2), 175–81.

Wang, Y., & Szeto, W. Y. (2018). Static green repositioning in bike sharing systems with broken bikes. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 65(September), 438–457.

Yan, A. (2017, March 1). Thousands of bike-sharing scheme cycles seized in Shanghai, South China Morning Post. Retrived from https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2075091/thousands-bike-sharing-scheme-cycles-seized-shanghai.

Yin, J., Qian, L., & Shen, J. (2018). From value co-creation to value co-destruction? The case of dockless bike sharing in China. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 71, 169–185.

Zhang, D., Yu, C., Desai, J., Lau, H. Y. K., & Srivathsan, S. (2017). A time-space network flow approach to dynamic repositioning in bicycle sharing systems. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 103, 188–207.

Zhang, S., Xiang, G., & Huang, Z. (2018). Bike-sharing static rebalancing by considering the collection of bicycles in need of repair. Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2018, 1–18.

Zhang, Y., Brussel, M G. B., Thomas, T. & van Maarseveen, M. F. A. M. (2018). Mining bike-sharing travel behavior data: An investigation into trip chains and transition activities. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 69, 39–50.

Zhang, Y., & Mi, Z. (2018). Environmental benefits of bike sharing: A big data-based analysis. Applied Energy, 220(December), 296–301.

Zhong, R., & Zhang, C. (2018, December 20). Ofo, pioneer of China’s bike-sharing boom, is in a crisis. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/technology/ofo-bicycle-share-china.html.