Analysis of Multi-City Bike-Sharing Systems During Pandemic
Ride sharing systems are becoming a global phenomenon and the benefits of public/ environmental health are significant. During this process we wanted to establish how we could show the effects of how a worldwide pandemic can influence a ride sharing system at a city scale. We wanted to see if this is actually a concern for ride sharing systems or if the pandemic has not affected it to the magnitude that we think. Given the resources available, we have constructed a study comparing the responses of people, in Chicago, that are willing to use bike sharing systems before and during the initial start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found the results are drastic. Moving forward, the following steps after these findings would be to analyze how, even in a pandemic, we can make bike sharing systems more attractive and safe to use again.
Research Focus
Our research using ridership data from Divvy is focused around the impacts of Covid-19 on the Chicago bike sharing program. We analyzed the data from April 2019 and compared it to data from April 2020.
Initial Questions
How were bike sharing systems impacted by the initial spread of COVID-19 and how have ridership patterns changed. Was the impact felt across multiple urban areas and was the resulting change in ridership patterns consistent across different cities. Above we compared Divvy ridership data for April 2019 and April 2020 by days of the week. In addition to the fact that total ridership is down considerably in April 2020 as compared to 2019 there is also a change in customer behavior. In 2019 customers were using the bikes more during the week while in 2020 Saturday and Sunday are the busiest days. Perhaps this suggests that in 2019 these bikes were used more for commuting and in 2020 the bikes are used more frequently for leisure. Below we show the same breakdown for two other ride sharing systems.
Divvy Bicycle Sharing
The data presented below is focused on shared bicycle data. The data used in this analysis was downloaded from https://www.divvybikes.com/. Divvy is a bicycle ride sharing service located in Chicago, Illinois. Divvy’s bikes and stations are owned by the Chicago Department of Transportation and Lyft operates the fleet. Currently the fleet consists of over 600 stations throughout Chicago and Evanston Illinois with over 6000 bikes available for use. Customers can pick up a bike at any station either by purchasing an annual membership for $9 per month (charged $108 annually), purchasing a day pass for $15 per day or a single ride at $3.30 per trip. Customers can use the interactive map showing available bikes at each station in real time either through a mobile app or the Divvy website.
Usage Statistics
We analyzed Q1 2020 data to come up with station activity levels and usage statistics. We hope to compare this data with Q1/Q2 2019 and Q2 2020 to see how ridership changed during the pandemic as well as how seasonality impacts usage. From Q1 2020 data there were over 418,000 total rides logged. We cleaned the data by filtering out any rides > 240 minutes and any rides <0 minutes.
Average Trip Time (Mins): 9.40
Median Trip Time (Mins): 6:46
Member rides were 90% of the total ridership.
Map showing the location of 608 Divvy bike stations in Chicago and Evanston.
Total trips for each station with the location dot sized to represent the total activity level of each station relative to total trips.
Top 50 stations as per data compared between 2019 and 2020.
Chart Below compares the total rides by the day of the week for April 2019 and April 2020.
Chart compares total rides from April 2019 and April 2020 by days of the week. In addition to the fact that total ridership is down considerably in April 2020 as compared to 2019 there is also a change in customer behavior. In 2019 customers were using the bikes more during the week while in 2020 Saturday and Sunday are the busiest days. Perhaps this suggests that in 2019 these bikes were used more for commuting and in 2020 the bikes are used more frequently for leisure.
Comparing total ridership from the top 50 stations in terms of total activity from April 2019 and April 2020.
Chart below clearly shows 2019 bike sharing systems over taking 2020. Granted this graph shows only 50 stations it still represents how much more 2019 bike sharing was used in the top 50 stations. There is a possibility that the reason for this in the month of April, 2020 there was an increase in fear of using public transportation.
Chart below shows the top 10 stations impacted from Covid-19 in terms of overall ridership change from April 2019 and April 2020.
This chart shows that the COVID-19 pandemic definitely impacted the amount of trips produced within the month of April. We also found that the top 10 station locations with the largest spread were situated near tourist attractions within the city. Most of them situated around Millennium Park, Navy Pier and Union Station.
The chord graphs below depicts all Divvy Bike sharing traffic between stations during April 2019 and April 2020.
Viewing the 2019 chord graph there are a few stations that produce more trips than the other related stations. Looking at the 2020 chord graph you notice that the stations that produced a larger quantity of trips reduces and the majority of the graph looks evenly distributed all around. But, all stations lose total number of trips overall.
We compared the bike-sharing system of Chicago , Portland and Philadelphia.
Portloand-Biketown
Chart below compares total rides by the day of the week for Portland-Biketown for April 2019 and April 2020.
Chart below compares total ridership from the top 50 stations in terms of total activity from April 2019 and April 2020.
Chart below shows the top 10 stations impacted from Covid-19 in terms of overall ridership change from April 2019 and April 2020, for Portland-Biketown
Philadelphia-Indego Bikes
chart compares total rides by the day of the week for Philadelphia-Indego for April 2019 and April 2020.
Chart below compares total ridership from the top 50 stations in terms of total activity from April 2019 and April 2020 for Indego Bikesharing System.
Chart below shows the top 10 stations impacted from Covid-19 in terms of overall ridership change from April 2019 and April 2020, for Indego Bikesharing System.
Comparison between 3 different bike service systems
Chart below shows the percentage change in total trips by month from March 2020-March 2021 across Divvy, Biketown and Indego Bike sharing systems.
The chart below shows month-over-month percentage change of total trips by bike sharing system. The variability in this graph shows that there is a dramatic increase in ridership across all bike sharing systems in May and a corresponding drop off in ridership during November. This not only shows the effects of seasonality on bike sharing ridership, but also gives us a glimpse into how consistently the overall usage changed as a result of COVID-19 across the three bike sharing systems.
Figure out later
Summary and Foundation for Future Research
In our research we showed how there are clear changes in the way people utilize bike sharing systems when observing patterns from April 2019 and April 2020. We conclude that these ridership changes are the result of the lockdowns, business closures and the shift from office jobs to work-from-home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While our main focus in this research was Divvy bicycle sharing in Chicago, we included analysis of Indego in Philadelphia and Biketown in Portland to show that these changes in ridership patterns are visible across the country. By drilling down on some of the most frequented stations across these different cities we have shown that business centers, transportation hubs and dense residential areas are where we can see the biggest decrease in bike sharing station activity when comparing April 2019 and April 2020. We have also shown that ridership during April 2019 is heaviest during the week with Monday and Tuesday being the busiest days across all three cities. During April 2020, these patterns change with ridership increasing on weekends and decreasing during the week. These observations lead us to conclude that ridership has changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic with patrons using these systems more for leisurely weekend travel to various points of interest during April 2020 instead of using these bike sharing systems as commuting platforms to travel back and forth from home to work. Once cities begin to re-open, as vaccines and herd immunity make it possible to go back into the office, this research should be expanded upon to see how ridership continues to evolve. Will people move back into the 2019 patterns of using bike sharing predominantly as a commuting system, using rented bikes to travel from home to place of work and back again? Or will a new pattern develop based on a hybrid office/work-from-home model where there are some users using bike sharing for commuting purposes and others continuing to use these systems as a leisurely exploit and form of weekend recreation?