User experience of the Milton Park bike-share scheme report of survey

Calvert, Thomas; Bartle, Caroline; Parkhurst, Graham

Abstract

In February 2020, six electric bikes (e-bikes) were added to the Milton Park fleet of 18 ‘conventional’ shared bikes, with funding from the MultiCAV project. The scheme is operated by Bainton Bikes of Oxford using Donkey Republic software, and branded as Mi-Link: the customer-facing naming for the MultiCAV project at Milton Park. The e-bikes were the first Mi-link scheme to be launched at the Park. Part of the Mi-Link vision is that cycling be more easily integrated into multi-modal journeys, supported by the real-time, multi-modal journey planner developed by Zipabout. The Mi-Link journey planner is part of the platform that constitutes the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) dimension of the MultiCAV project.

Whilst Donkey Republic already makes data available to the project partners on date, time, and start points of rental sessions, we know little about why people are using the bikes, for what types of trip, nor what their views are about the scheme, particularly the e-bike element. Also of interest is users’ propensity to engage with the Mi-Link MaaS platform and other on-line tools. A literature review undertaken by UWE showed a research gap, internationally, on various discrete aspects of bike-share:

• Use of bike share for commute trips to/from peri-urban employment areas, whether as uni-modal or multi-modal trips.
• User attitudes to conventional vs. e-bikes as part of bike share schemes.
• Bike share information systems as part of a wider MaaS platform.
• Use of shared bikes for business travel
• E-bike share schemes
• Gender disparities in use of bike share

It was therefore decided to undertake research on the user experience of the bike-share scheme at Milton Park that would contribute both to the MultiCAV project directly, and to the wider research base. Research questions, to be explored through a survey and qualitative interviews, were developed in line with these motivations.

The aims of the survey were to: poll reasons for use of the shared bikes, obtain demographic information; identify any difference between use/users of conventional bikes and e-bikes; and gain an overview of the use of different on-line tools. The findings of the interviews, once completed, were combined with the survey analysis in a separate report, also available on the UWE repository.

• Report Type: Project Report
• Deposit Date: Jun 30, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 30, 2022
• Keywords: shared-bike; e-bike; business travel; commuting; business park
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9666161