An Optimal Batch Removal Strategy of Unusable Bicycles in

Large-Scale Bicycle Sharing Systems

Quan-Lin Li and Rui-Na Fan

School of Economics and Management Sciences
Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China

Abstract

During the last decades the bicycle sharing systems have emerged as a public
transport mode devoted to short trip, and they have widely been deployed in more
than 900 major cities around the world. In the present design and operations of
bicycle sharing systems, it has become a basic and interesting topic on how to
dynamically remove those unusable bicycles in various stations such that the
probability of problematic (empty or full) stations keeps as low as possible. Since any
bicycle sharing system is a very complicated stochastic network, it is always more
difficult and challenging to find a better removal strategy of unusable bicycles.
In this paper, we provide an optimal batch strategy for removing those unusable
bicycles from various stations, and also give a novel corresponding way to add
necessary new (repaired or purchased) bicycles into the bicycle sharing system such
that the number of bicycles in this system has a non-reduced trend. For such a more
complicated bicycle sharing system with removing unusable bicycles and with adding
new bicycles, we establish a queueing network of virtual nodes with finite waiting
rooms, and give the product-form solution for the steady-state probabilities of joint
queue lengths at the virtual nodes. Based on this, we can assess the quality of service
which leads to setting up an optimal problem of batch strategy for removing those
unusable bicycles. Finally, we use uses some numerical examples to show
effectiveness and computability of our modeling and method, and also give valuable
observation on influence of the key parameters on system performance. We hope the
methodology and results given in this paper are applicable in research on basic and
key issues of more general bike sharing systems.