Potentials and Prospects of Bicycle Sharing System in Smart Cities: A Review

As a typical example of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) in a smart city, the bicycle sharing is developing so fast and changing the citizens’ travel habits to a large extent in China. However, its disorder development brings a heavy burden for city, and it is considered as a junk of city in many citizens’ opinions. In our previous work, we proposed the concept of Internet of Shared Bicycle (IoSB) to solve some problems in technique. In this paper, we devote to how to enable bicycle sharing playing a more important role in the construction of smart city, instead of being treated only as a type of traffic mode. We summarize some of the current research status of bicycle sharing in smart cities and put forward some of our own views. Then the Bicycle Sharing System (BSS) is be further studied and explored the possibility of being deployed as a terminal in the city in terms of technology. When a serious disaster comes, it serves as an auxiliary communication system for the city and becomes a measure of the city’s emergency network. In particular, we describe a special role of bicycle sharing during public health events. In addition, the feasibility in some interesting cases with great potential in the future is also discussed.