Scholars Award: US Public-Private Partnerships in Bicycle Sharing Systems

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports empirical research to examine the planning of bikeshare (i.e., bicycle-sharing) systems in the United States, focusing on Philadelphia (PA), Austin (TX), and Oakland (CA). Bikeshare systems are typically partnerships between municipalities and provider firms in which a network of automatic docking stations is available to the public on a subscription basis. They are one of the fastest-growing transportation technologies in America, with currently over 200 systems in operation or planned, and they have become enormously popular as part of a sustainable urban development strategy. However, their users are disproportionately white and affluent, even in diverse cities. The goal of this project is to explain these disparities through an analysis of the socio-spatial shaping of bikeshare systems by a network of actors; the network includes contracting firms, planners, city officials, and consultants. The results of this project will have substantial policy relevance for urban planning, public administration, and transportation engineering. Research products include the presentation of findings at academic and professional conferences and to the public at large, publication of findings in key peer-reviewed journals and a monograph, journalistic articles and research briefs aimed at practitioners, the training of a graduate research assistant, and contributions of findings and collected data to organizations focused on sustainable mobility and inclusive transportation policy. The main hypothesis of this research project is that the requirements of public-private partnerships embed spatial inequalities into the sociotechnical organization of bikeshare systems thereby limiting their capacity to act as a more generalized element of urban environmental governance. While many studies of the fast-growing sector of urban shared mobility systems focus on their technological novelty, this research foregrounds the social and political forces that work through such systems, with broad implications beyond bikeshare. Through interviews, site observation, GIS analysis, and archival research, the study pursues three main objectives. It will assess how data about existing social, economic, and spatial factors shape the technical process of bikeshare system design, particularly station location. It will also investigate the role of partnerships between governments and bikeshare providers in this shaping process, and its effect on the capacity to accommodate equity concerns. In addition, it will examine the planning, use, and evaluation of stations at the system edge, and the responses of other actors, including residents, businesses, institutions, and community organizations, to these stations.