Bikeshare systems are rapidly becoming more prevalent in metro and micropolitan areas around the world. However, low-income populations, people of color, and transit-dependent households are not highly representative of the bikeshare user’s profile. Some bikeshare programs in the United States, such as Divvy in Chicago, try to address this equity problem by promoting their systems among low-income communities. Currently, there is limited research estimating bikeshare ridership in these communities and quantitatively analyzing the impacts of financial barriers in disadvantaged areas at the station level. This research fills this gap by analyzing the current utilization of bikeshare systems among disadvantaged populations. The study develops a Negative Binomial regression model to estimate bikeshare ridership using data from Chicago’s bikeshare system. The results show that bikeshare stations in disadvantaged communities generate around two-thirds of the average annual trips across all stations. The employment rate plays an important role in increasing bikeshare ridership, especially for disadvantaged areas. Additionally, the research found that the proportion of trips by annual members is significantly lower in disadvantaged communities than in other areas. However, interestingly, residents in disadvantaged communities tend to make longer bikeshare trips once they are annual members. Their dependence on bikeshare systems may result from accessibility improvement (e.g., work commute by bikeshare). Based on all the findings, we discuss planning implications for more socially inclusive and equitable bikeshare systems.

Bikeshare系统在世界各地的大都市和小城市中迅速流行。但是，低收入人群，有色人种和依赖公交的家庭并不能很好地代表Bikeshare用户的个人资料。美国的某些Bikeshare计划，例如Divvy在芝加哥，尝试通过在低收入社区中推广他们的系统来解决这一公平问题。当前，很少有研究来估计这些社区中的单车共享率，并在车站一级定量分析财务障碍对贫困地区的影响。这项研究通过分析弱势群体中单车共享系统的当前利用率来填补这一空白。该研究开发了一个负二项式回归模型，可以使用芝加哥的bikeshare系统中的数据估算出bikeshare的乘车人数。结果表明，处于不利地位的社区中的单车共享站点在所有站点的年均出行量中占大约三分之二。就业率在增加单车出​​行率方面起着重要作用，尤其是在贫困地区。另外，研究发现，处于不利地位的社区的年度会员出行比例明显低于其他地区。然而，有趣的是，处于弱势社区的居民一旦成为常年会员，往往会骑更长的自行车。他们对单车共享系统的依赖可能来自可访问性的提高（例如，单车共享通勤上下班）。基于所有发现，我们讨论了对更具社会包容性和公平的单车共享系统的规划意义。