Who Gets from the Station: Three Passenger Types and the Shared Bike
Context
The last leg from the station to the final destination is the bottleneck of any train journey. In the Netherlands, only 19% of the population lives within a kilometer of a station, while 69% live within 5 km, and this segment often determines whether someone takes the train or the car. Related studies have looked at how shared transport competes with buses and trams in cities, and at the potential of bikes as a continuation of the journey. But almost no one has examined the diversity of shared modes, from regular bikes to e-scooters, specifically for the egress from the train, nor accounted for how parking and rental are organized.
Methods
The authors conducted a stated-choice experiment: 1,891 respondents from the Dutch Railways panel and a commercial panel chose among six options: walking, bus/tram/metro, shared bike, e-bike, e-scooter (step), and e-moped. Each option was described by travel time, waiting time, walking time, price, parking type (free, centralized, staffed), and rental type (one-way or return). The experiment was repeated for three distances (1, 4, 7 km), three train journey durations (15, 45, 75 minutes), and two purposes (work/study or leisure). The data were analyzed with a latent class model that identifies hidden groups with different preferences.
Results
The model identified three classes. Multimodal enthusiasts (58% of the population) have no strong attachments and choose the option with the best time-price trade-off; they are willing to pay up to 4.21 euros for a free service. Skeptical cyclists (16%) strongly prefer the bike but are open to shared services if they are safe and simple; they value free access at 1.81 euros. Sharing-averse public transport users (27%) choose the bus or tram and avoid shared scooters, finding them complicated and dangerous; they are willing to pay an extra 1.41 euros for staffed parking. Walking is most preferred for distances up to 2 km, while for 5–10 km, bike and bus compete. Introducing additional shared services mainly draws users away from existing shared bikes, not from the bus.
Implications
This work differs from neighboring studies in that it is the first to compare four shared modes for train egress and to account for system parameters such as parking and rental type. This gives station operators a tool to calculate which service to launch based on demand and distances. The finding that new shared services compete with each other rather than with public transport is important for planning: adding e-bikes will not necessarily increase the share of car-free trips but will merely redistribute users.
Future development
The topic could develop toward studying the full trip chain: how the quality of the last leg affects the decision to take the train at all rather than drive. It would also be promising to test how behavior changes if shared transport is integrated into a single ticket with the train, and how weather or time of day affects choices.
Impact
The results are directly applicable for transport operators and urban planners when designing services at stations. They are also useful for shared-mode providers in setting tariffs and rental schemes.
Next steps
The next step is to repeat the survey including car drivers who rarely take the train, and to give respondents the option to forgo the train trip altogether. This would allow estimating how many people could be shifted from car to the train-plus-shared-transport combination.
Key open problems
For transport science, the open question remains how to bridge the gap between stated preferences and actual behavior: people say one thing in surveys but do another. This work shows that segmentation by sharing readiness can help, but longitudinal data on actual service use are needed.
In the Netherlands, there are more bicycles than residents, but only about 10% of regular train passengers have a second bike at the arrival side. The OV-fiets shared bike service, launched in 2008, has grown to 300 stations and 5.9 million trips per year.
Key numbers
- share of multimodal enthusiasts: 58% of the population
- share of skeptical cyclists: 16% of the population
- share of sharing-averse public transport users: 27% of the population
- willingness to pay for free service (enthusiasts): 4.21 euros
- distance where walking dominates: up to 2 km