Using OpenStreetMap data for the location analysis on public bicycle stations – A case study on the Youbike system in downtown Taipei city

YouBike is the first public bicycle system of Taipei City has provided services since August 2012. The system currently has 9,423,651 active member, and the total rented number is about 106,895,634. There are also some other bicycle-sharing systems introduced into other cities in Taiwan. The two biggest public bicycle systems in Taipei city are the YouBike system which is basically owned by the city government and the oBike system which is owned by a private company from Singapore. The biggest difference between these two systems is the requirement of the docking stations. The YouBike system is classified as the “automated stations” system, which means the bicycle can be rented from a docking station and returned to itself or the other station under the same system. The oBike system is classified as “dockless bikes” system, which means each bicycle has a lock integrated in the frame, and therefore, it does not require a docking station. Although the YouBike system is restricted by the location and the limited number of docking stations, it is still the most popular choice of citizens. This paper will put its emphasis on analyzing the location of docking stations to improve the efficiency of bikes circulation. OpenStreetMap(OSM) is a crowd-sourcing mapping platform. Its volunteered geographic information (VGI) is completely open to the public. In this study, we extract geographic data from OSM, such as roads, sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and the popular destinations in Taipei city. These data are treated as the influence factors for location analysis of docking stations. A model is established to evaluate the efficiency of the bicycles circulation. The archived usage data is used to verify and modify the model. Hopefully the suggested location of the docking stations will improve the efficiency and stimulate more usage.