UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

On the promise of bikeshare programs to transform urban transportation, Philadelphia’s former Chief of Staff Andrew Stover said, “It’s only typical a couple times in any given century that a city gets to introduce a new form of public transportation. It’s very important that you do it in a way that creates as much opportunity as possible for as many citizens as possible” (Ferrentino & Monroe 2014). But bikeshare opportunities don’t always translate into outcomes. In Washington DC, a 2013 Member Survey of its public bicycle sharing program, Capital Bikeshare, showed that 80 percent of members were white, 80 percent had an income of $50k or more, and 95 percent had at least a 4-year college education. Indeed, Capital Bikeshare, which operates the DC system, reports that in disadvantaged communities, the bicycles are seldom used, the tires of their shared bikes are frequently slashed, and their parking docks are often vandalized. With Capital Bikeshare embarking on an ambitious three-year plan to expand to 454 stations and forging new partnerships with community health clinics, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) asked me to analyze current and predicted bikeshare ridership in low-income DC communities. To do this I thoroughly reviewed literature, conducted a geospatial analysis, estimated multivariate regression models predicting utilization, and conducted field observations. My findings suggest that ridership can increase even in high crime and high poverty areas if four major financial, cultural, and structural barriers are addressed: (1) a lack of convenient, reliable accessibility to bikeshare locations, (2) fear for safety, (3) difficult-to-afford membership costs, and (4) a lack of diversity in the ages and ethnicities of users. To overcome these barriers, I conclude that a variety of intra-agency, inter-agency, and partnerships with local institutions will be needed to support the adoption of Capital Bikeshare in historically disadvantaged, low bikeshare usage communities.