

Forecasting Bike Sharing Demand - efavdb
http://efavdb.com/bike-share-forecasting/

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tunnuz
Interesting post, and it's very nice that the author decided to share all the
scripts. Forecasting the demand is the first fundamental step to actually
optimize the rebalancing operations that usually happen overnight. There is a
lot of academic and applied research in this field.

Prof. David Shmoys (Cornell University) is working on optimising the
rebalancing operations of the of CitiBike NYC (press article
[http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/01/cornell-
research...](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/01/cornell-research-
steers-nyc-bikes-needy-stations)), Prof. Günther Raidl has been doing the same
for a while for the CityBike Vienna (Austria) network
([http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/08/balancing-bike-
share-...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/08/balancing-bike-share-
stations-has-become-a-serious-scientific-endeavor/379188)), and three
researchers from Udine (Italy), and Vienna (Austria), including myself, have
been working on the same problem on similar data sets (summary paper
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10601-015-9182-1](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10601-015-9182-1),
or preprint
[http://www.tunnuz.net/documents/digaspero_rendl_urli_constra...](http://www.tunnuz.net/documents/digaspero_rendl_urli_constraints2014.pdf)).

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efavdb
I am glad you enjoyed the post. I have only recently started working with the
bike data sets and it has been interesting. I will take a look at those
articles. Thanks!

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tunnuz
Also, you might want to look at the keyword "computational sustainability",
which is where stuff like this gets usually published in academia.

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alwaysdoit
Maybe we just need self-riding bikes to solve these demand balancing issues.

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efavdb
That would be nice, or maybe there could be incentives for people to move the
bikes. Seeing bikes ride themselves would look great though.

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swimfar
In some cities they reward you for returning bikes to certain locations that
have a borrow/return ratio imbalance. For example, they will add bonus minutes
to your card so if you go over the standard single-trip time period (e.g. 30
minutes) you can use the extra minutes to avoid getting an extra charge.

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bennettfeely
Pittsburgh will be getting it's first bike sharing program this May, with 50
stations and I believe about 500 bikes.

If you've ever been to Pittsburgh you will immediately notice how hilly the
city is in downtown and in neighboring Oakland. I look forward to the bike
sharing program but I don't believe people will be very willing to bike uphill
a significant distance without some reward like you are suggesting.

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tunnuz
That is one of the main reasons why rebalancing is needed (people being lazy).

