Evaluating
Spatial Equity

Given the proliferation of Public Bike Share Systems (BSSs) in this country, this research explores the equity dimension of docked bike share systems across the U.S. and in the State of New Jersey. As an affordable, healthy and growing mobility alternative, the importance of equity in the planning and implementation of bike share systems cannot be highlighted enough, particularly because of their potential to benefit disadvantaged populations that rely on affordable/alternative modes of travel more than affluent populations (Clark, 2017; Ogilvie & Goodman, 2012). However, past research has consistently found BSSs to provide unequal access to disadvantaged populations. This study builds upon the existing research in the field, identifying best practices used to measure equity, and developing a method to evaluate equity in bike share systems throughout the U.S.

Charles Brown of Equitable Cities, served as a senior researcher/principal investigator with the New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center (NJ BPRC) in this study to analyze 10 of the largest third generation docked bike share systems in the United States along with 3 docked bike share systems in New Jersey. These bike share systems were carefully selected to reflect diversity in their size and age, and their host region’s size and geography as well as data availability. A potential extension of this research could be to analyze spatial equity across socio-economic characteristics of jobs (workers). The research methodology could also act as a base for future research to incorporate additional factors such as street network density, availability of bikes and presence of bicycle infrastructure in the analysis.