Date of Award

6-2016

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Dr. Benjamin Ofori-Amoah

Second Advisor

Dr. Christopher Scott Smith

Third Advisor

Dr. Kathleen Baker

Keywords

Accessibility, bike-share station, transportation equity, linear programming. ootimization

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Public bike-share infrastructure has the potential to play an important role in sustainable transport systems by enhancing environmental, public health and economic outcomes. In this research, the temporal distributive equity of bike-share infrastructure was examined for initial (300) and expanded (477) bike-share stations across the city of Chicago using eleven accessibility indices. The eleven accessibility indices were calculated using counts of bike share stations within neighborhood boundaries, buffered catchment areas and network distances. By examining the accessibility indices, it was recommended to re-distribute the bike share stations for optimal allocation across the different economic hardship categories. In this study, Linear Optimization Model was configured for the re-distribution of bike share stations. The number of expanded bike share stations was used to limit the value for re-distributed stations. Two LP models were calibrated by using the composite accessibility, which was essentially a combination of nine suitability indices. A general comparison was revealed with some statistical analysis to check the significant relationship between the models. LP model with constraining the categorical economic hardship zones was selected as the best model in terms of equitable re-distribution of bike-share stations.

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