Long-Term Predictions of Bike-Sharing Stations? Bikes Availability

Bike-sharing systems are present in many cities as a valid alternative to fuel-based public transports since they are eco-friendly, prevent traffic congestions, reduce the probability of social contacts. On the other hand, bike-sharing present some problems such as the irregular distribution of bikes on the stations/racks/areas (still very used for e-bikes) and for the final users the difficulty of knowing in advance their status with a certain degree of confidence, whether there will be available bikes at a specific bike-station at a certain time of the day, or a free slot for leaving the rented bike. Therefore, providing predictions can be useful for improving the quality of e-bike services. This paper presents a technique to predict the number of available bikes and free bike slots in bike-sharing stations (the best solution for e-bikes). To this end, a set of features and predictive models have been developed and compared to identify the best prediction model for long-term predi...