Impact of COVID-19 on Usage Patterns of a Bike-Sharing System: Case Study of Seoul
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147, Issue 10
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a rapid and significant effect on human mobility because of the travel restriction to slow the spread of the infectious disease. However, the impact caused by COVID-19 is not the same for all modes of transportation. In previous studies, public transport has shown the greatest decline compared with other modes, and bike-sharing systems have been less affected by COVID-19 than public transport. This study aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on bike-sharing systems in detail over a longer period than previous studies to determine the changes in the ridership and usage patterns of bike-sharing systems depending on the circumstances related to COVID-19. This study found that bike rentals for leisure purposes rather than for means of transportation have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, which tends to be more distinct during outbreaks. Moreover, it was also shown that the status of COVID-19 and the strong social distancing affected bike rentals, and the effects of some factors related to bike-sharing ridership on bike rentals have significantly changed because of the change in the mobility patterns.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available in a repository online in accordance with funder data retention policies. The Seoul Bike, the floating population, and the COVID-19 data are available in Public Data Portal of Korea (https://www.data.go.kr), the weather data can be obtained from Open MET Data Portal (https://data.kma.go.kr), and the census data sets can be provided from Statistical Geographic Information Service (https://sgis.kostat.go.kr).
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (No. 2020R1F1A1054496).
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Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147 • Issue 10 • October 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 11, 2021
Accepted: Jun 25, 2021
Published online: Aug 12, 2021
Published in print: Oct 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jan 12, 2022
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