CitiBike Re-balancing — lingchen-urban

CitiBike Re-balancing

Oct 2023 - Nov 2023

Predicting space/time demand for bike share pickups in New York City.

Bike share is a dock-based sharing system, which is also a sustainable and convenient transportation option. The system can provide access to bikes for short-term use, ranging from several minutes to hours. However, the most difficult operational problems is the need to re-balance bikes across the network. As bike share is not useful if a dock has no bikes to pick up, nor if there are no opening docking spaces to deposit. Therefore, the re-balancing is the practice of anticipating bike share demand for all docks at all times and manually redistributing bikes to ensure a bike or a docking space is available when needed.

In this project, I’ll dive into the bike share system in New York City (Citi Bike) and forecast space/time demand for bike share pickups. My focused area and time frame is Manhattan, May 2023. By developing an algorithm to predict the trip starts across time and space, I try to en-vision and inform a bike re-balancing plan to ensure supply and enhance efficiency.

Specifically, several mechanisms will be taken in light of expected outcomes. For example, there will be trucks to move bikes between different locations. Also, some incentives will be offered if riders manage to move a bike from place to place.

Type: Academic Work | Public Policy Analytics
Role: Individual Work
Location: Manhattan, New York City
Date: October, 2023 - November, 2023

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