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2025-02-11
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Copyright (c) 2025 Shubhayan Ukil, Aditi Misra
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How to Cite
How bikesharing changed destination distance for its users: A case study of Chicago Metropolitan Area
Shubhayan Ukil
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6443-9691
Aditi Misra
University of Colorado, Denver
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5600-5973
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2025.2597
Keywords: Bikeshare, Travel distance, Quasi-Experimental, Destination, Causal Effect
Abstract
Shared bike use has been growing, especially post-pandemic, because it improves personal mobility and provides an alternative to walking while increasing connectivity to transit services. Existing research has examined the impact of these services on mode share and vehicle ownership. However, these services also hold the potential to influence the distance people travel to reach destinations. In this study, we examine the impact of Divvy shared bike services in the Chicago metropolitan region on the average trip distance of its users across all trips between 2008, when the service was not operational in the city, and 2018. We use repeated cross-sectional household travel datasets from 2008 and 2018 for analysis. We perform difference-in-difference regression to calculate the change in average trip distance for the shared bike user group. As there is no way to track people in repeated cross-sectional datasets, unlike a panel dataset, we use propensity score matching to match users between the two datasets. The results indicate that the average trip distance is reduced by 0.841 km (miles) for the shared bike user group with the presence of shared bike services. Shared bike users are more likely to live in urban areas where destinations are in proximity and use multi-modal travel, which could be a reason for this group’s reduced average trip distance. Given our findings, we recommend planning for shared bike services integrated with transit in urban areas and promoting mixed land use so that users can choose proximate destinations in dense urban areas.
Author Biographies
Shubhayan Ukil, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Shubhayan UKil is a Doctoral Candidate in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His work looks at how the built environment and socioeconomic factors influence people’s travel and destination choices. He looks at travel decision-making as a complex phenomenon that needs to be analyzed by considering the impact of different mechanisms in the surrounding system.
Aditi Misra, University of Colorado, Denver
Dr. Aditi Misra is an Assistant Professor in Transportation Engineering at the University of Colorado, Denver. My research has mainly been in the area of safety, travel behavior, and demand modeling with focus on marginalized road users. I have led multiple industry and government-sponsored projects in safe shared mobility within urban transportation systems. I and my group use statistical and econometric methods, emerging large-scale data as well as small-scale survey data in our research to understand how latent constructs like attitude and lifestyle influence decisions, choice patterns, and behaviors.
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