The City of Vancouver has proposed a public bike-share program, expected to launch in early 2014 (see here). Following a popular trend, the bike-share scheme has now been implemented in over 500 cities around the globe including Montreal, Paris, Hangzhou (to name some larger ones) and more recently New York and Chicago.
This system comes to Vancouver during a period of growth in bicycle infrastructure in order to promote cycling and reduce trips made by automobiles. This is echoed in the City of Vancouver’s Transportation Plan, which makes it a goal to have half of all trips be sustainable (on foot/bike/transit) by 2020 and two-thirds of all trips be sustainable by 2040 (CoV, 2012, p. 11). In particular, cycling is promoted as a practical, healthy, and inexpensive way to move around the city for short trips under 5km, which takes less than 20 minutes (p. 25).
It is no surprise then that the City of Vancouver has approved a public bike-share scheme for the core area around Downtown, citing its mainstream appeal and ability to increase rates of cycling (CoV, 2012, p. 72). Hoping for a summer 2014 release (though this date has been pushed back several times), the initial run will be a ‘field test’ within Downtown, which will subsequently be expanded to incorporate a metro area bounded by Arbutus, 12th Avenue, and Main Street, according to a report to City Council in the summer of 2013. Full launch of the system is expected to come with 1500 bikes and 125 docking stations, dispersed within the bounded area.
In this study I determine potential locations for docking stations in the study area described above. My objective is to locate specific sites for bike-share stations using a geographic information system, in particular making use of a location-allocation analysis.
