Spatio-Temporal Trends of E-Bike Sharing System Deployment: A Review in Europe, North America and Asia
1
Department of Thermodynamics and Mathematical Physics, University of Mons, Boulevard Dolez 31, 7000 Mons, Belgium
2
European Research Area Chair (*Holder) ‘Net-Zero Energy Efficiency on City Districts, NZED’ Unit, Research Institute for Energy, University of Mons, Rue de l’Epargne, 56, 7000 Mons, Belgium
3
Inteligg P.C., Karaiskaki 28, 10554 Athens, Greece
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(11), 4611; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114611
Received: 27 April 2020 / Revised: 28 May 2020 / Accepted: 2 June 2020 / Published: 5 June 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Energy Management and Sustainable Transportation Systems)
Recent data on conventional bike and/or electric bike (e-bike) sharing systems reveal that more than 2900 systems are operating in cities worldwide, indicating the increased adoption of this alternative mode of transportation. Addressing the existing gap in the literature regarding the deployment of e-bike sharing systems (e-BSSs) in particular, this paper reviews their spatio-temporal characteristics, and attempts to (a) map the worldwide distribution of e-BSSs, (b) identify temporal trends in terms of annual growth/expansion of e-BSS deployment worldwide and (c) explore the spatial characteristics of the recorded growth, in terms of adoption on a country scale, population coverage and type of system/initial fleet sizes. To that end, it examines the patterns identified from the global to the country level, based on data collected from an online source of BSS information worldwide. A comparative analysis is performed with a focus on Europe, North America and Asia, providing insights on the growth rate of the specific bikesharing market segment. Although the dockless e-BSS has been only within three years of competition with station-based implementations, it shows a rapid integration to the overall technology diffusion trend, while it is more established in Asia and North America in comparison with Europe and launches with larger fleet sizes.
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Keywords:
e-bikesharing; exploratory data analysis; sustainable transportation; technology diffusion
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MDPI and ACS Style
Galatoulas, N.-F.; Genikomsakis, K.N.; Ioakimidis, C.S. Spatio-Temporal Trends of E-Bike Sharing System Deployment: A Review in Europe, North America and Asia. Sustainability 2020, 12, 4611.
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