Assessment of the dynamics of bike-sharing for students’ mobility in Kigali City

Abstract

Compared to other modes of transportation available today, bike sharing is favored in more than 800 cities for its low environmental impact. Members of the bike-sharing program can use bikes from any related bike-sharing network. Users get the advantages of the system without bearing the burdens of ownership. There have been four versions of bike-sharing used thus far. The application of smart cards is a relatively new innovation introduced in bike-sharing systems. The new innovation allowed for the beginning of data availability through Stations and it has facilitated data accessibility for researchers. But papers tracking the evolution of bike-sharing membership and activities are rare. In contrast, studies focusing on students' mobility are few and far between. Within the framework of bike sharing, the dynamics of bike sharing are discussed in the literature of this paper. This has been accomplished by keeping tabs on how many people used the system over time, since this provided important information about the system's functioning and might be used as a basis for allocating stations. Data from GuraRide, Kigali - Rwanda used in this study. And 10,073 bike-share trips taken between December 9, 2021 and May 30, 2022 were analyzed. Then, a GIS software was used to map the locations of stations and corridors, and Python software was used for statistical analysis. A random forest algorithm was used to assess changes in stations and corridors usage. The findings indicated positive variations among system users and stations usage.