Extending Vancouver's Public Bike Share system: a GIS analysis

ABSTRACT

The City of Vancouver has announced that it will be implementing a public bike share system (PBS) sometime in 2014 which will rent bikes out for short-term trips for a fee. The PBS will improve mobility in the city and will assist Vancouver in reaching it's goal of becoming the most sustainable city in the world by 2020. However, for Vancouver to truly become a sustainable city, it is necessary to reduce personal vehicle trips across the city, not just in the currently proposed service area of the downtown core and the area between Arbutus Street to the west, 12th Avenue to the south and Main Street to the west. This project is aimed towards the future of Vancouver's PBS, and attempts to locate the areas of the city not covered by the current bike share proposal which are most likely to successfully support the system. The following characteristics are used to determine the best five percent of the study area: low slope, proximity to bike paths and greenways, moderate distance from a rapid transit station, a large number of people between the ages of fifteen and fourty four, and a low proportion of immigrants and children.  These factors are weighed using a multi-criteria analysis in ArcGIS 10.1. The result of the multi-criteria analysis demonstrates that the most viable areas for a PBS in Vancouver are found to be adjacent to the currently proposed service area or between a corridor that extends to approximately 41st Avenue between Oak Street to the west and Fraser Street to the east. Thus, this analysis suggests that Vancouver's PBS, if expanded in the future, should expand radially outward from the currently proposed service area as well as up the aforementioned corridor.