Some Key Problems Of The Development Strategy In City Public Bicycle Systems

The ownership and utilization amount of private cars increase sharply, which cause serious traffic problems. As an effective way to mitigate traffic congestions and vehicle emissions, the bikesharing has experienced a rapid development in China since 2008, which is influenced by the internal and external factors of the system.Based on the characteristics of Chinese cities, these factors are systematically investigated. Measures and conclusions that benefit the development of bikesharing schemes are drawn. The main contributions contain:Study on the mode choice problem when the private car owners face the new public bicycle mode. The mode choice problem that private car owners face under the circumstance of the public bicycle mode that scarce researches focus on, which results to the competition of the public bicycle and private car in short and middle distance travels, meanwhile is the complement to other public transport modes in the middle and long distance travels. Therefore the evolution law of mode choice of the private car owners is researched. The results show that under different conditions, the mode choice made by traveler groups reaches different equilibrium states, which are related to the mode payoffs and the proportion of the public bicycle group at the initial state.Then, concrete measures are proposed to enhance the travel mode transformation from the private car to the public bicycle and other public transportation modes.The principal-agent relationships among three main participants in bikesharing service are studied, which include the public, government and enterprises. The relationship between the government and enterprises is often studied mainly based on the qualitative analysis, while the one between the public and government is seldom involved. To bridge this gap, the dual principal-agent relationship is analyzed,meanwhile the relationship between the public and government is modeled and analyzed. Furthermore, the paper highlights three typical business modes of bikesharing systems, including the publicly owned and operated mode, the public private partnership mode, and the street-furniture contract mode. Results show that when the enterprises belonging to the government are in charge of the bikesharing systems, the efficient is lowest; when the bikesharing system is operated in the public private partnership mode, the enterprises are more likely to pursue the trade offbetween the cost and the workers’ leisure time rather than hard working; and when the advertising enterprises operate the bikesharing system, they improve the service level consciously, but they face much more financial pressures and risks because of lacking direct financial subsidies. Based on the results, suggestions are given on how to exert the functions of government in order to motivate agents to work hard.The operation modes of bikesharing systems are studied and compared. In order to search the suitable operation modes for bikesharing systems, the practical prevalent management modes are categorized into five classes, which are the no-fee and no-restriction mode, no fee with restrictions mode, low-fee and no-restriction mode,low fees with restrictions mode, and high-fee and no-restriction mode. Based on these modes, the six one is proposed, that is, the high-fee, no restriction with subsidy mode.All modes are quantitatively analyzed and compared from the individual optimal and system optimal perspective. The analytical results reveal that the usage amount and the payoffs of the users and the management level of administrators required are different from each other. Meanwhile, the economy and public welfare of the bike-sharing systems vary with different operation modes. The paper concludes that the low fees with restrictions mode is more suitable for Chinese cities.