Competitive or complementary : a spatiotemporal investigative analysis into Austin’s shared micromobility modes

Shared micromobility has taken up US cities by storm over the past few years. Free-floating technology is the new age shared transportation innovation and has become widely popular amongst the younger-aged cohorts, giving users increased flexibility in terms of vehicle operation in comparison to the static station-based bike-sharing systems. This PR projects to find a better understanding of the three shared micromobility modes, thereby deducing whether the three modes are complementary or substitutive in nature. The research utilizes publicly available shared micromobility data from the City of Austin, to understand what the scenario exists in Austin, where all three micromobility modes are actively present. Applying temporal signatures, the research tries to identify whether variations occur for each type of shared micromobility mode across these attributes. It also applies hypothesis testing by employing methods like Analysis of Variances and Two- Sample T-Test of Means, to distinguish whether the three modes are statistically similar or dissimilar. Since the University of Texas at Austin is a significant entity for the city, the research tries to investigate whether students and staff are crucial target user groups based on spatial visualizations of trips. The analysis concludes that all three micromobility modes are complementary and not substitutive, the reason being that users utilize these modes to travel for different purposes, across the similar or dissimilar geography, i.e. usage is subjective and depends on user preference. The only commonality observed between the three modes is the similarity towards deviating from their original paths assuming to conduct secondary activities. Variation of usage is seen across all three modes, which suggests that temporal signatures have significant effects on the usage. Key locations like south Downtown, the University of Texas at Austin, and the West Campus serve as major traffic hubs for all three modes. From these results, city officials can hypothesize potential station locations based on traffic generation and attraction of the free-floating modes and also come into potential partnerships with private operators to better expand the existing station-based bike-share system.