Self-Organizing Redistribution of Bicycles in a Bike-Sharing System based on Decentralized Control

Abstract

Abstract-Currently, bike-sharing systems undergo a rapid expansion due to technical improvements in the operation combined with an increased environmental and health awareness of people. When it comes to the acceptance of such systems the reliability is of great importance. It depends heavily on the availability of bicycles at the stations. But, in spite of truck-based redistribution efforts by the operators, stations still tend to become full or empty, especially in rush-hour situations. This paper builds upon an incentive scheme that encourages users to approach nearby stations for renting and returning bikes, thereby redistributing them in a self-organized fashion. A cooperativeness parameter is determined by the fraction of users that respond to an incentive by choosing the proposed stations. It uses a decentralized control process to calculate alternative rent and return stations for each of the stations. These alternatives are then proposed to the users when they approach an empty or full station. The approach is based on a decentralized control framework that allows to equipping different distributed software systems with the control capabilities needed to realize the coordination efforts required to achieve the desired self-organizing properties.

Performance Analysis and Improvement of the Bike Sharing System Using Closed Queuing Networks with Blocking Mechanism

“…Therefore, when we involve all the stations, it is necessary to compute the fleet size taking account of all the stations. Figure 6 shows the evolution of the overall network performance indicator (G pn , see (7)) as a function of the fleet size where the two availabilities have equal importance, i.e., (a i = b i = 0.5, i = 1, . .…”

“…The monitoring operations are real-time or short time regulation activities aiming to empty docks in the saturated stations and feeding the empty ones by relocating the bikes using trucks [5,6]. Alternatively, the operator offers financial incentives to the users, who then relocate the bikes themselves [7][8][9].…”

An Agent-Based Distributed Approach for Bike Sharing Systems

“…In [4], a mathematical model to formulate public bike station distribution is conducted to minimize the total travel time and investment budget. To stress the unbalance distribution problem, the redistribution strategy is adopted [9,16,26,19]. In literature [16], vehicles are used to redistribute the bikes.…”

Developing a Smart Service System to Enrich Bike Riders’ Experience

“…According to citibike's monthly report in Oct. 2016 [2], Citi Bike staff rebalanced about 4000 bike daily. Preisler et al [11] find that for a bike share system the number of empty stations is typically higher than the number of full stations despite the redistribution efforts that are already carried out.…”