Evaluation of free-floating bike-share on a university campus using a multi-method approach

Bike-sharing, especially free-floating bike-share, has tremendous potential for increasing active transport on a college campus. Increased bike use improves public health, reduces pollution, and solves traffic congestion problems. Like other innovations, free-floating bikeshare proceeds through various stages while disseminated and before being widely adopted and accepted. A multi-method study using quantitative bike usage data, a cross-sectional survey, and focus group discussions was used to evaluate the Spring 2018 launch of a free-floating bike-share program at a large public university. Three months after implementation, there were 19,504 registered users, 24,371 different riders, 165,854 rides, and 85,778 miles traveled. The average trip length was 0.52 miles and lasted 8.3 min. Survey data from 2845 students, faculty, and staff revealed that 33.6% had used the bikes. Bike users were more likely to be students, freshmen, living on campus, be a current biker, and have confidence in their biking ability. Focus groups revealed that safety was a concern, knowledge about how the program worked was low among non-users and faculty and staff, cost was a barrier, and that adherence to bike-share rules needed to be improved. A large segment of the university population quickly adopted free-floating bike-share. However, continued work needs to be done to enhance safety, provide clear guidelines on bike-share rules (e.g., bike parking), and increase knowledge of the program with a specific focus on use by faculty and staff to ensure continued success and ultimately improve health.