Environmental impact assessment of bike-sharing considering the modal shift from public transit

Bike sharing has the potential to benefit the environment with less energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. Most previous studies on this topic assumed that bikeshare trips mainly substitute cars. However, bikeshare also replaces ecologically friendly transportation modes like public transit (PT). Therefore, it is vital to examine bikeshare's modal shift from PT to fully assess its environmental impacts. This paper examines the bikeshare and PT relationships in Chengdu,and environmental effects of bike sharing under two cases based on this relationship. The first case only considers the substitution of bikeshare for car and walking, and 19,964.31 L of fuel and 4125.13 kg of CO₂ can be saved; while the second case also considers its substitution for buses and subways, and 13,198.68 L of fuel and 2564.31 kg of CO₂ can be saved. Results indicate that the environmental benefits of bike sharing may be overestimated if not considering its substitution for PT.