Bike shares are becoming increasingly popular, with examples being used in various cities around the world like Bicing in Barcelona and Bixi in Montreal and Toronto. In today’s busy world, the option to hop on a bike is more environmentally friendly, saves time compared to driving or public transportation during rush hour, and is an excellent way to see and interact with the city.  Having a reliable bike share service as an alternative system for public transportation would ease street traffic, relieve concerns for personal bike theft, and a good coverage of bike stations would allow users to find convenient and secure places to park.

Recently, Vancouver has caught up to the trend and a bike share company started up in 2015. Our project is an independent look at using GIS to select the best locations for bike share stations in Vancouver using ESRI’s ArcMap program.

By conducting a multi-criteria evaluation, we looked at factors such as population density, connectivity to rapid transit, proximity to places of interest such as parks and touristic areas.

We are not employed by or affiliated with the current bike share company in Vancouver in any way and are solely creating this project for the purposes of GEOB 370 Advanced GIS at the University of British Columbia.