Suggested Citation:
Kwon, Kihyun (2024)

Bike-Sharing as Entertainment: Increased Round-Trip Bike Share Trips During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the U.S.

This study explored the patterns of bike-sharing trips in nine U.S. cities between 2019 and 2020 and estimated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used Bike Share trip data from the official websites of its operators in nine cities. We first examined the patterns of bikeshare trips between 2019 and 2020 by assessing descriptive statistics. We then employed a multilevel mixed-effect regression model on the pooled data to examine the effects of neighborhood-built environments on round-trip bike-sharing trips. The key findings are as follows: First, the COVID-19 outbreak generally led to reduced bike-sharing trips, but not in all cities. For instance, we observed increased bike-sharing trips after the COVID-19 pandemic in Columbus, Ohio. Second, we observed increased round-trip bike-sharing trips (i.e., trips that began and ended at the same bike-share station) in all nine cities after the COVID-19 outbreak. Third, bike-sharing trips in areas with high proportions of green (open) spaces and recreational facilities are more likely to be round-trip bike-sharing trips. This means that round-trip bike-sharing trips may have entertainment attributes such as leisure or exercise instead of commuting. This study reveals that public bike-sharing can be useful for entertainment, leisure, exercise, and transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic.