Bikeshare Patterns in the Age of Covid

In the past ten years, bikeshares in Washington, DC (DC) and New York City (NYC) have grown in popularity.They offer a convenient transportation and recreation option for both locals and tourists to get around each city. While normal patterns, such as day of the week and time of day, are already known to affect the use of bike shares, the effect of recent Covid-19 related disruptions on ride demand and patterns has not been explored. This project aims to visually show how ride patterns change around the cities in conjunction with the still unfolding Covid-19 pandemic.

Human cases of Covid-19 were first confirmed in Wuhan China on December 31, 2019 (Custis). From there, the virus quickly spread around the world at a breakneck pace, aided by its highly contagious nature and the lack of scientifically based data on how to effectively treat this new disease.In response to the growing threat posed by the pandemic, government officials in both NYC and DC introduced first of their kind regulations to try to stem the infection rate. Nonessential businesses were forced to close, citizens were urged to forego nonessential tasks outside the home, and public transportation schedules were greatly reduced. In conjunction with the government response, entities in the private sector in both of these cities initiated mass work from home policies. Every facet of everyday life, including transportation patterns, was disrupted across the country including in these two cities, on a level never before experienced. Although this analysis originally focused on Covid-19 related influences on bikeshare patterns, during the course of the project I uncovered trends related to the unprecedented “Black Lives Matter” protests which occurred across the country following the murder of George Floyd in police custody. This project will also touch on how rides changed in response to these activities and how patterns were also impacted by the government’s response to these new events.