Supporting the strategic design of public bicycle sharing systems: The experience of a large Mexican city

Resumen

Public bike sharing systems (BSS) comprises fleets of bicycles available for shared use at a low cost. BSS are gaining popularity as an environmentally friendly mode of transportation; however, their design entails critical decisions to transportation planners and public authorities.  The objective of this study was to design a BSS for a large Mexican city taking into account the available budget, the fulfillment of a desired percentage of the predicted demand, the integration of the BSS with the existent public transportation network and the potential environmental benefit of substituting motorized transportation by cycling. A bi-objective optimization model with two objectives -minimize the total cost of the system’s implementation and maximize the reduction of CO₂ emissions- is formulated and solved to determine the optimal location of bike stations and size of the bicycle fleet required to attain a specific level of service. The analysis of the non-dominated solutions to the problem allows the identification of alternative designs that enhance the BSS’ level of service and its contribution to air quality, provided municipal authorities are willing to make tradeoffs between the two objectives and approve a larger investment.