Route choice of bike share users: Leveraging GPS data to derive choice sets

To identify the determinants of bike share users' route choices, this research collects 132,397 hub-to-hub global positioning system (GPS) trajectories over a 12-month period between April 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016 from 750 bicycles provided by Hamilton Bike Share (HBS). A GIS-based map-matching algorithm is used to derive users' routes along the cycling network within Hamilton, Ontario and generate multiple attributes for each route, such as route distance, route directness, average distance between intersections, and the number of turns, intersections, and unique road segments. Concerning route choice analysis, the origin and destination pair should be the same for all routes within a choice set, thus HBS users' trips are grouped by origin-destination hub pairs. Since trips taken by different users between a hub pair can follow the same route, unique routes are extracted using a link signature extraction tool. Following this, a normalized Gini (Gn) coefficient is calculated for each hub pair to evaluate users' preferences among all the unique hub-to-hub route choices. A Gn closer to 0 indicates that routes between a hub pair are more evenly used, while a value closer to 1 implies a higher preference toward one dominant route. Three route choice models, a global model, a medium Gn model, and a high Gn model, are estimated using Path-Size Logit to determine how route choice is affected by the presence of dominant routes. These models suggest that HBS users are willing to detour for some attributes, such as bicycle facilities, but tend to avoid circuitous routes, turns, steep slopes, and roads with high traffic volume.

Automated summary

This research collected and analyzed route choice data of bike share users to find that users prefer straighter routes with fewer turns, and are willing to detour for better bicycle facilities.