Boston was among the first largest cities in the U.S to commit to a bike sharing system. Since first established in 2011, the shared bike stations have increased from 60 to more than 190, while the number of bikes has increased from 600 to 1,800. This city’s public-owned bike share system – Blue Bikes (originally known as Hubway), is constantly generating large amount of data: the riders have taken over six million trips via shared bike since launch, including more than 1.3 million trip records in 2017 alone. In this way, it is an ideal data source to study citizen’s daily commute.
However, based on preliminary observation, we have noticed that: 1) due to the pre-determined distribution of the system, short bike supply exists in specific stations at specific times; 2) it is not always faster or convenient to take a bike in certain cases; 3) the First-Mile/Last-Mile commute problems of some neighborhoods are not well addressed via the existing Blue Bike system.
In this way, launching a commute oriented biking share analysis will help us: 1) understand the people’s commute modes across different jurisdictions in Boston; 2) evaluate the efficiency of the current bike sharing system; 3) recommend new transit routes and propose optimization strategies to improve the city’s overall commute system.