Can’t drive today? The impact of driving restrictions on bikeshare ridership in Mexico City

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Can’t drive today? The impact of driving restrictions on bikeshare ridership in Mexico City

de Buen Kalman, Rebeca

Highlights • Driving restrictions increase bikeshare usage during peak commuting hours. • Ridership is suppressed for non-essential travel, likely due to high pollution. • Bikeshare users change their ridership behavior in response to air pollution warnings.

Abstract The Mexico City government has introduced policies to reduce pollution from cars, including a license-plate based driving restriction and a bikeshare. When restrictions are in place, people need to find transportation alternatives. This research leverages the random nature of driving restrictions to explore whether people use bikeshare when driving is restricted due to poor air quality. Negative binomial models were used to study these effects using data from 2016 to 2019. Results indicate that restricted days exhibit approximately 17% lower bikeshare use (10–24% decrease, 95% CI) for non-peak traffic hours compared to regular days. However, ridership increases during peak traffic hours. Morning ridership increases up to 12.5% (3–22% increase, 95% C.I) and evening ridership increases up to 16.2% (5–27.6% increase, 95% C.I). The analysis suggests that the poor environmental conditions may buffer bikeshare system use increases and that bikeshare can be a critical partner in local transportation infrastructure.