Study on Bike Sharing Systems in European and Japanese Cities

Abstract

Many cities introduce Bike Sharing Systems (BSS) for the purpose of environmental loading reduction and so on. People can rent and return bikes at any stations in the city. It is also call Bike share system, Public bike, and Community Cycle System. Firstly, authors research European and Japanese BSS macroscopically and do comparative analysis. Secondly, based on the questionnaire survey to Japanese BSS, analyze and evaluate BSS from the viewpoints of operating expenses. By comparative analysis, it was clarified that European cities introduce large-scale systems had the low modal split of bike and precipitation. From these results, Japanese organization has to plan BSS. And by the result of cost-benefit analysis, in the case of permanent use, there are many situations that BSS are in debt. Thus management situations of these BSS are difficult to continue. BSS in Japan only benefits temporary use for sightseeing purposes. It can be said that BSS for permanent use should be the project to be abolished in Japan. We propose that in place of BSS operating, by extending bike way network, it is possible to promote the use of bikes.