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The number of public bike share systems has increased rapidly across the United States in recent years. However, there is evidence that significant portions of the population are underrepresented among bike share users, including people of color, along with lower-income, female, older, and less educated groups.1,2 Lack of bike share stations in neighborhoods with people of color and/or lower incomes is one factor, but it does not completely explain the disparities in use.3,4 Cost, lack of payment options, lack of bank and credit card accounts, and lack of familiarity with bike sharing are other potential barriers.2,5 Many cities are trying to overcome access and use barriers for underserved communities. This includes cities working with the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) to test potentially replicable approaches, such as focused outreach.
Bicycling and bike share have the potential to benefit disadvantaged communities by providing new mobility options, while also providing an opportunity for recreation and physical activity. We recently completed a three-part study to explore dimensions of bike share equity, including 1) efforts among public bike share system operators around the country; 2) views and experiences of residents in lower-income communities of color regarding biking and bike share; and 3) experiences of lower-income and people of color who do use bike share. Our findings provide insight into effective strategies to attract new and diverse users, benefits to current and potential participants, and topics needing additional research.
Part 1: Survey of Bike Share Systems/Operators
As a first step, we asked bike share systems if and how they were approaching issues of equity. For example: Do they have equity policy statements? Do they consider equity when making or implementing decisions relating to the bike share system? Do they have metrics to understand how equitable their system may be, or if their efforts to improve equity are successful? We focused on systems in the United States with at least 40 bikes. In total, representatives of 75 active or pre-launch systems were invited via email to take a short survey, with 56 systems responding. Just over half of the responding systems we considered were medium-sized (100-500 bikes), while around a quarter were small systems (40-100 bikes) and another quarter were large systems (>500 bikes).
Less than one in four surveyed systems...
