Effects of Built Environment on Urban Bike-Sharing Travel Under COVID-19

As a sustainable mode of transportation, bike-sharing plays an indispensable role particularly in the post-COVID 19 era. This study aims to examine time-varying effects of built environment on urban bike-sharing travel in light of COVID-19. Specifically, the bike-sharing travel data (including amount of travel and average travel time) for 1246 Citi Bike stations in New York were collected across three periods: pre-COVID-19, the early outbreak period, and the stabilization period. The spatial regression approach was employed to model the relationship between the station-level travel demands and the surrounding built environment. Built environment variables for this study included road features, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and neighboring variables.The results revealed that the effects of built environment on bike-sharing trips varied substantially during the three tested periods. For instance, the bicycle lanes promoted the number of bike-sharing trips before the outbreak, but during and after the outbreak period of COVID-19, it had a significantly negative impact. The differences in the demand for bike-sharing due to gender and age decreased in the light of COVID-19. The results also demonstrated that it is necessary to integrate the amount of travel and the average travel time to measure the bike-sharing travel, since certain factors may have different impacts on these two indicators. Such as, during the stable period of COVID-19, the setting of bicycle lanes reduced the amount of travel but extended the travel time. Conversely, the setting of bus stops or subway stations increased the amount of bike-sharing travel but reduced the travel time. Our findings provide practical implications for both government transportation planning and operators of bike-sharing company.