Impact of bike sharing system in an urban area

Cycling can be encouraged in many ways, among the others by implementing Bike Sharing services. In order to assess the impacts of such a service, a methodology was developed and applied to a case study in the city centre of Rome. The paper reports on the results of the estimation of the potential Bike Sharing demand and of the Bike Sharing impacts. The potential Bike Sharing demand was estimated for three different users’ groups (residents inside the city centre, non residents inside the city centre and tourists) and based on three main attributes influencing the users’ choice of using or not the Bike Sharing service (i.e. density of the Bike Sharing stations, cost of the service and availability of the Bike Sharing service). An experimental design for stated preferences interviews was defined to collect opinions on the Bike Sharing service from a sample of potential users. They were asked to express choices in seven different scenarios of Bike Sharing implementation. The interview results were used to calibrate Multinomial Logit demand models. This allowed assessing the impacts on the potential demand of the Bike Sharing attributes. One of the main results is that availability of bicycle at take/release stations is the main factor influencing the choice of the users to use or not the service.