Bike-sharing stations: A maximal covering location approach

The promotion of sustainable alternatives to motorized individual mobility has been seen in the past few decades as one of the cornerstones in a strategy to reduce the negative externalities related to the transportation sector. Bicycle sharing is increasingly popular as a sustainable transport system and the number of bike sharing schemes has grown significantly worldwide in recent years. One of the most important elements in implementation of these systems is the location of the stations. In fact the non-optimal locating of bike sharing compromises its success. Municipalities or public-private partnerships are mostly responsible for implementing bike-sharing schemes. The public investment in bicycle mobility (particularly bike-sharing) is complex because it is always subject to a budget. The main concern for public investment is to maximize the benefits through the design and implementation of bike-sharing systems. This work sets out a methodology to help with the decision-making of bike-sharing systems. The research work we present proposes using an optimization method to design the bike sharing system such that it maximizes the demand covered and takes the available budget as a constraint. It combines strategic decisions for locating bike-sharing stations and defining the dimension of the system (stations and number of bicycles) with operational decisions (relocating bicycles). As an outcome, the model determines the optimal location of the bicycle stations, the fleet size, the capacity of the stations and the number of bicycles in each station, considering an initial investment lower than the given budget. In addition, it balances the annual cost of the system and the revenue assuming a possible supplementary budget from the system provider to cover any loss resulting from the shortfall between its operating cost and the revenue from the subscription charges. A case study in Coimbra, Portugal, is presented and discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.