[M II A II R II K]

In London, Bike Sharing Just Got Even More Efficient


September 27, 2010

By Jonna McKone

Read More: http://thecityfix.com/in-london-bike...ore-efficient/

City University London’s School of Informatics uses Geographic Information System (GIS) to map in real-time the city’s new shared bike system, Barclays Cycle Hire, to help predict and document bike usage and availability at each of the system’s 400 planned docking stations that are designed to house more than 6,000 bikes. Currently, the map includes data for more than 300 docking stations throughout London, showing when bikes are in high use and other general patterns at each station.

- Researchers developed an application that includes graphs of London’s bike availability over the past 24 hours (orange line) compared to average bike usage from the week before (gray line.) Data are updated in real time, showing the actual status of each station, revealing the dynamics of biking and travel at specific sites in the city over the span of a typical day.

- The students also used an information visualization system, known as treemaps, that uses hierarchical categories of rectangles within sub-branches to show the information in context around the city. The size of the rectangles are proportional to the capacity of bikes at the station.


The usage at the different stations varies widely.

* The availability of bikes at nearly all stations dips between noon and 5:00 p.m.

* Hardwick Street, Clerkenwell, in downtown central London, had almost no available bikes between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.

* A number of stations experience peak usage between 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. — and others experience very little usage (or none at all) during that same time period.

* A few stations experienced very high usage as late as 8:00 p.m.

* For the most part, the graphs showing data from the past 24 hours are similar to the averages gathered from the past week, but there were some anomalies.

Graphs show Barclays bike usage at different docking stations. Photo by City University of London giCentre.

http://gicentre.org/tfl_bikes/










Cycle map created by Simon Parker. Image via Cycle Lifestyle magazine.






Screenshot of the Barclay Cycle Hire iPhone app.