Competitive or complementary? Analyzing bike-sharing use between public transport stops: A case study in Budapest

In most cities, we face an excessive number of cars, leading to congestion, lost time, increase in produced emissions, or decreased safety. Many policies are thus aiming at shifting the travel mode of conducted trips to more sustainable ones, typically public transport. Lately, bike-sharing offers a sustainable way of transport. It is most suitable to support the last mile of a trip and thus is relevant mostly to connect high-capacity public transport stops to the final destination. However, especially in downtown areas, it has the potential to replace trips by public transport. To understand whether these two travel modes compete or complement each other, a spatial analysis was conducted on origin-destination data of bike-sharing use, which start or end at a major public transport stop. Rides in different weather conditions during weekday afternoon peak hours and Saturday afternoon was considered to reveal correspondence among daily commuting and leisure trips. More than 6000 bike rentals were analyzed. Special focus was dedicated to the use of bike-sharing along frequent, high-capacity public transport lines. The analysis proved that bike-sharing has a mainly competitive role in downtown areas, as roughly half of the trips were conducted between public transport stops. The results of this study can be used by decision-makers to improve public transport and bike-sharing service or bike infrastructure, as well as by operators to optimize the reallocation of bike-sharing vehicles.