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Understanding Bike Share Usage: An Investigation of SoBi (Social Bicycles) Hamilton

This thesis examines factors that influence the daily number of trip departures and
arrivals at over 100 hubs comprising Hamilton, Ontario’s (Canada) bike share program
– SoBi (Social Bicycles) Hamilton. SoBi operates all year, and during its first year of
operation (April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016), over 200,000 trips were generated on SoBi
bikes. The study utilizes data from SoBi Hamilton, the 2011 Canadian Census, the 2011
Transportation Tomorrow Survey, Environment Canada, and Hamilton’s Open Source
Data initiative. From these master files, daily trips, meteorological data, temporal
variables, socio-demographic and built environment attributes were obtained to generate
a comprehensive suite of explanatory variables to explain the daily trips at each hub. A
multilevel regression approach was used to understand the associations between bike
share usage at each hub and each suite of explanatory variables at two temporal scales:
total daily trips at hubs and total daily trips across four time periods of the day. Findings
demonstrate that weather and temporal attributes play a significant role in trip departures
and arrivals. In addition, hub attributes vary in significance throughout different times of
the day for trip departures and arrivals. Overall, the methodology and findings allow us
to identify factors that increase SoBi usage, which can also benefit city planners and
engineers who are implementing a bike share system with the goal of maximizing bike
share activity in urban centers. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/22662
Date January 2017
CreatorsCiuro, Celenna
ContributorsScott, Darren, Geography and Earth Sciences
Source SetsMcMaster University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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