Measuring the relationship between environmental and demographic characteristics and checkouts at bike sharing stations in Texas cities

This study uses a geospatial and statistical analysis to quantify environmental and demographic characteristics within quarter mile and half mile service areas of bike sharing stations and then measure the relationship between these characteristics and checkouts at bike sharing stations in four Texas cities. Ten multiple regression analyses were done to measure the significance of groups of these characteristics when predicting checkouts. It was found that, for the most part, individual environmental and demographic characteristics are not strongly correlated with checkouts at bike sharing stations. When using multiple characteristics in the multiple regression analyses there were large variations in the R2 values between the different cities and geographic levels. While groups of environmental and demographic characteristics can be used to predict checkouts with varying success, depending on the city, there are other variables that should be accounted for when attempting to predict checkouts at bike sharing stations.