Abstract
This study explored spatiotemporal patterns of e-bike usage. The carbon emissions of electric bike-sharing systems in Chicago were estimated, and their spatial distribution was characterized. Customers preferred e-bikes as a transportation mode for trips that took less than 20 min, indicating that the use of e-bikes for short trips could reduce traffic congestion. This finding has an important implication for urban planning studies. It would be more reasonable to calculate the potential reduction of carbon emissions from substituting e-bike rides for short trips by car or other transportation modes rather than for all trips. This study also identified hotspots and corresponding peak periods. Recommendations were made for strategically dispatching e-bikes around the central business district to meet customer needs during weekday peak commuting hours. E-bike trips produced the least amount of carbon in January. Emissions gradually climbed until April, when they almost tripled the January emissions. Throughout these 4 months, e-bike trips generated 1624.4 kg of carbon emissions, with weekday emissions accounting for the majority. The spatial patterns of carbon emissions were visualized based on street networks. The method used in this study for exploring carbon emissions can be applied to future research after adjusting the model parameters to fit particular scenarios.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Data will be made available on request.
References
Bieliński T, Kwapisz A, Ważna A (2021) Electric bike-sharing services mode substitution for driving, public transit, and cycling. Transp Res Part d: Transp Environ 96:102883. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2021.102883
Caspi Or (2023) Equity implications of electric bikesharing in Philadelphia. GeoJ 88(2):1559–1617. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10698-1
Chen E, Ye Z (2021) Identifying the nonlinear relationship between free-floating bike sharing usage and built environment. J Clean Prod 280:124281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124281
Chen J, Zhou D, Zhao Y, Bohong Wu, Tian Wu (2020) Life cycle carbon dioxide emissions of bike sharing in China: production, operation, and recycling. Resour Conserv Recycl 162:105011. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105011
Choi SE, Kim J, Seo D (2023) Travel patterns of free-floating e-bike-sharing users before and during COVID-19 pandemic. Cities 132:104065. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.104065
D’Almeida L, Rye T, Pomponi F (2021) Emissions assessment of bike sharing schemes: the case of just eat cycles in Edinburgh, UK. Sustain Cities Soc 71:103012. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103012
Elmashhara MG, Silva J, Sá E, Carvalho A, Rezazadeh A (2022) Factors influencing user behaviour in micromobility sharing systems: a systematic literature review and research directions. Travel Behav Soc 27:1–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbs.2021.10.001
Gao F, Li S, Tan Z, Liao S (2022) Visualizing the spatiotemporal characteristics of dockless bike sharing usage in Shenzhen, China. J Geovisualization Spatial Anal 6(1):12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41651-022-00107-z
Gebhard L, Golab L, Keshav S, Meer Hd (2016) Range prediction for electric bicycles. In: Proceedings of the seventh international conference on future energy systems 21:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/2934328.2934349
Guo D, Zhu Xi, Jin H, Gao P, Andris C (2012) Discovering spatial patterns in origin-destination mobility data: discovering spatial patterns in origin-destination mobility data. Trans GIS 16(3):411–429. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9671.2012.01344.x
He Yi, Song Z, Liu Z, Sze NN (2019) Factors influencing electric bike share ridership: analysis of Park City, Utah. Transp Res Rec 2673(5):12–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361198119838981
Huo J, Yang H, Li C, Zheng R, Yang L, Wen Yi (2021) Influence of the built environment on e-scooter sharing ridership: a tale of five cities. J Transp Geogr 93:103084. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103084
Kharaghani H, Etemadfard H, Golmohammadi M (2023) Spatio-temporal analysis of precipitation effects on bicycle-sharing systems with tensor approach. J Geovisualization Spatial Anal 7(2):30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41651-023-00161-1
Li W, Wang S, Zhang X, Jia Q, Tian Y (2020) Understanding intra-urban human mobility through an exploratory spatiotemporal analysis of bike-sharing trajectories. Int J Geogr Inf Sci 34(12):2451–2474. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658816.2020.1712401
Ma X, Ji Y, Yang M, Jin Y, Tan Xu (2018) Understanding bikeshare mode as a feeder to metro by isolating metro-bikeshare transfers from smart card data. Transp Policy 71:57–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2018.07.008
Macioszek E, Cieśla M (2022) External environmental analysis for sustainable bike-sharing system development. Energies 15(3):791. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15030791
Talavera-Garcia R, Romanillos G, Arias-Molinares D (2021) Examining Spatio-temporal mobility patterns of bike-sharing systems: the case of BiciMAD (Madrid). J Maps 17(1):7–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2020.1866697
Wamburu J, Lee S, Hajiesmaili MH, Irwin D, Shenoy P (2021) Ride substitution using electric bike sharing: feasibility, cost, and carbon analysis. Proc ACM Interact Mob Wearable Ubiquitous Technol 5(1):1–28. https://doi.org/10.1145/3448081
Wang Y, Sun S (2022) Does large scale free-floating bike sharing really improve the sustainability of urban transportation? Empirical evidence from Beijing. Sustain Cities Soc 76:103533. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103533
Yang H, Huo J, Bao Y, Li X, Yang L, Cherry CR (2021) Impact of e-scooter sharing on bike sharing in Chicago. Transp Res Part a: Policy Pract 154:23–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2021.09.012
Zhou X, Ji Y, Yuan Y, Zhang F, An Q (2022) Spatiotemporal characteristics analysis of commuting by shared electric bike: a case study of Ningbo, China. J Clean Prod 362:132337. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132337
Zhou Y, Yuanxin Yu, Wang Y, He B, Yang L (2023) Mode substitution and carbon emission impacts of electric bike sharing systems. Sustain Cities Soc 89:104312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.104312
Zhu R, Zhang X, Kondor D, Santi P, Ratti C (2020) Understanding spatio-temporal heterogeneity of bike-sharing and scooter-sharing mobility. Comput Environ Urban Syst 81:101483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2020.101483
Funding
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (grant number: 2023J05162), the Science and Technology Project of the Education Department of Fujian Province (grant number: JAT200282), and the Scientific Research Foundation of Jimei University, China (grant number: ZQ2019025).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Xie, J., Xiao, Z. Spatiotemporal Patterns and Carbon Emissions of Shared-Electric-Bike Trips in Chicago. J geovis spat anal 8, 13 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41651-024-00171-7
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41651-024-00171-7