Repositioning activities for bike-sharing systems

• Main Author: Zhu, Tiantian.
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54786
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Bike-sharing systems have become increasingly popular to cities all over the world, which allow people to rent a bike from any self-served station for short trips around the city and then return it to any other station. Obviously, satisfying the fluctuating and asymmetric demand is a crucial problem for a bike-sharing system. It could be handled through repositioning activities by a fleet of trucks. As moving docking stations is a development trend, in this thesis the repositioning activities are defined as transferring both bikes and lockers from some stations to others to balance the system. In this thesis, two models are formulated: the "Single Truck Single Period" model and the "Single Truck Multiple Periods" model. The illustrations of numerical experiments for the two models are presented, respectively. Through the sensitivity analysis of the "Single Truck Single Period" model, the test results indicate how some important parameters affect the performances of the model. At last, some insights are put forward according to the characteristics of the models and the test results.