Urban Bicycle sharing system and their role as egress mode on commuters' mode choice

Bicycle sharing is one of the fastest growing transportation modes of the past decade. The implementation of urban bicycle sharing systems (BSS) has proven to contribute to various environmental and social problems. Recently, there has been increasing awareness regarding the integration of bicycle sharing and train. This integration is assumed to have the potential to cause a modal shift from the private car. The ever-increasing private car use, especially due to commuter traffic, has negatively influenced the quality of life in cities, limiting further economic and social development. Encouraging a modal shift towards more sustainable transportation alternatives is therefore necessary. It is however unknown how urban BSS must be designed in the Dutch context, and their influence in the egress trip of train journeys regarding the transportation mode choice of commuters. A stated preference experiment is applied where data of 385 respondents is collected in the Netherlands. The estimated discrete choice models show that both private car and train commuters add most value to the rental fare and reliability at starting point regarding the preference for urban BSSs. In addition also significant are the attributes access time, egress time, and reliability at endpoint. For the train commuters also the bicycle type is found to be significant. The attributes that increases the utility of private car commuters to shift to the train are bicycle type, rental costs, access time, and egress time, while only egress time increases the utility of train commuters for urban BSSs instead of their current mode. Furthermore, also the socioeconomic characteristics, commuting trip characteristics, and transportation mode-related and BSS-related attitudinal factors are found to influence the preference for urban BSSs and the transportation mode choice of commuters. In general, it can be concluded that the integration of bicycle sharing and train has potential to cause a modal shift in the Netherlands.