Optimization Of Public Bicycle Network's Expanded Strategies Based On Flexsim

With heavy investment of the government into the urban public bicycle system,more and more people brace this green and environmentally friendly way of trip.Administrators of public bicycles are faced with the problem of explosive growth in demand and how to expand the existing public bicycle network under the present scale to meet the growing demand has become the primary issue.In the early stage of development of public bicycles,administrators are concerned about how to expand the network by adding new stations and build a sound public bicycle network system.After the establishment of the stations,with the passage of time,the demand of vehicles around the stations grows and as a result,the stationsconfiguration cannot satisfy the demand.Many scholars focus on the station selection,demand forecasting and vehicle scheduling during operation.However,the demand growth after station establishment receives little attention.For the frequent occurrence of "empty pile"and "full pile"during operation,administrators often attribute it to unreasonable operational scheduling and they constantly adjust the operational management strategy to address the problem,such as increasingthe scheduling frequency,changing the scheduling time.However,the problems of the frequent scheduling due to increasing demand,the decline of customer satisfaction and increasing demand are ignored.In this paper,three public bicycle network expansion strategies are proposed:station expansion,adding stations and merging stations.Station expansion is achieved by increasing station around the station.When the utilization rate is high and the demand for vehicles is much largerthan the existing number of vehicles,it is necessary to expand the stations.Adding stations is achieved by increasing the network nodes to expand the network.When utilization rate is high and demand for vehicles is high,adding stations can resolve the problem to some degree.Merging stations is achieved by changing the number of existing network topology and the number of vehicles to expand the network.When utilization rate is low,merging stations into other stations can enhance the utilization rate.Computer simulation is an important approach to evaluating the optimization strategy of public bicycle network.This study compares different optimization strategies of public bicycle network by Flexsim simulation technology to help the decision-maker to choose the optimal strategy.The study aims to expand the network,constructs the simulation model of public bicycle system by using the strategies of stations expansion,adding stations and merging stations.