A dynamic allocation model for bike sharing system; the sharing economy concept

Abstract

The problem of allocating bikes in bike sharing is well known and involves balancing the number of bikes in a station to avoid having too many or too few. Distributing the bikes incurs costs, such as maintenance, distribution, staff, insurance, office space, and others, which are borne by the organization. To maintain the same level of service while reducing operational costs, the sharing economy concept has been introduced. In this study, we assume that every bike user is willing to move the bike to a nearby station, and we propose a dynamic model that allows for bike allocation during operation time. Our mathematical model for dynamic allocation aims to determine the maximum number of transfer bikes needed by the users. Additionally, we compare our proposed model with the traditional model in terms of the number of insufficient bikes, distance, and CO₂ emissions. Our results demonstrate that the proposed model ensures that there are no unbalanced bikes at every station, similar to the traditional model. Even the total distance covered by the proposed model is longer than that of the traditional model. However, our findings indicate that applying the sharing economy concept also benefits the environment by reducing CO₂ emissions.