A Proposal of Localized Bike Sharing System for Common Facilities

Abstract

Bike Sharing System (BSS) recently attracts attention as a way of sustainable transportation. This paper proposes Localized Bike Sharing System(L-BSS), which targets users of common facilities and connects the common facilities to local important places. By this system, while the users enjoy high availability, owners of common facilities can gain profits of reduction of parking lots and illegally left bicycles. In order for launching an L-BSS business, it is necessary to determine essential conditions for implementing L-BSS in a target area such as balancing user demand and supply, span of rebalancing, and composition of users. To determine the conditions, we propose a supporting method for L-BSS planning by using demand estimation based on empirical data and Life Cycle Simulation. In a case study, we confirmed that this method is effective to evaluate business and support policymaking for L-BSS business planning.