Identifying the urban communities of New York City using bikeshare data from NYC citibike

This study identifies a measure of the cultural importance of an area within a city. It does so by making use of origindestination trip data and the bike stations of the bike share system in New York City as a proxy to study the city. Rarely is movement in the city studied at such a small scale. The change in strength of the similarity of movement between each station is studied. It is the first study to provide this measure of importance for every point in the system. This measure is then related to the characteristics which make for vibrant city communities, namely highly mixed land use types. It reveals that the spatial pattern of important areas remains constant over differing time periods. Communities are then characterised by the land uses surrounding these stations with high measures of importance. Finally it identifies the areas of global cultural importance alongside the areas of local importance to the city.

A Stationless Bikeshare Proof of Concept for College Campuses

Bikeshares promote healthy lifestyles and sustainability among commuters, casual riders, and tourists. However, the central pillar of modern systems, the bike station, cannot be easily integrated into a compact college campus. Fixed stations lack the flexibility to meet the needs of college students who make quick, short-distance trips. Additionally, the necessary cost of implementing and maintaining each station prohibits increasing the number of stations for user convenience. Therefore, the team developed a stationless bikeshare based on a smartlock permanently attached to bicycles in the system. The smartlock system design incorporates several innovative approaches to provide usability, security, and reliability that overcome the limitations of a station centered design. A focus group discussion allowed the team to receive feedback on the early lock, system, and website designs, identify improvements and craft a pleasant user experience. The team designed a unique, two-step lock system that is intuitive to operate while mitigating user error. To ensure security, user access is limited through near field ii communications (NFC) technology connected to a mechatronic release system. The said system relied on a NFC module and a servo working through an Arduino microcontroller coded in the Arduino IDE. To track rentals and maintain the system, each bike is fitted with an XBee module to communicate with a scalable ZigBee mesh network. The network allows for bidirectional, real-time communication with a Meteor.js web application, which enables user and administrator functions through an intuitive user interface available on mobile and desktop. The development of an independent smartlock to replace bike stations is essential to meet the needs of the modern college student. With the goal of creating a bikeshare that better serves college students, Team BIKES has laid the framework for a system that is affordable, easily adaptable, and implementable on any university expressing an interest in bringing a bikeshare to its campus.