Characterizing the speed and paths of shared bicycles in Lyon

TL;DR

This study analyzes 11.6 million bicycle trips in Lyon to understand urban biking behaviors, revealing bicycles often outperform cars in speed and path efficiency, and providing insights for bike infrastructure planning.

Contribution

It offers the first robust characterization of urban bikers' behaviors using large-scale trip data from Lyon's Vélo'v system.

Findings

Bicycles are faster than cars in downtown Lyon.

Bicycles tend to take shorter paths than cars.

Data identifies key locations for bike path improvements.

Abstract

Thanks to numerical data gathered by Lyon's shared bicycling system V\'elo'v, we are able to analyze 11.6 millions bicycle trips, leading to the first robust characterization of urban bikers' behaviors. We show that bicycles outstrip cars in downtown Lyon, by combining high speed and short paths.These data also allows us to calculate V\'elo'v fluxes on all streets, pointing to interesting locations for bike paths.