A bike-sharing demand prediction model based on Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks

Abstract

Shared bikes, as an eco-friendly transport mode, facilitate short commutes for urban dwellers and help alleviate traffic. However, the prevalent station-based strategy for bike placements often overlooks urban zones, cycling patterns, and more, resulting in underutilized bikes. To address this, we introduce the Spatio-Temporal Bike-sharing Demand Prediction (ST-BDP) model, leveraging multi-source data and Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks (STGCN). This model predicts spatial user demand for bikes between stations by constructing a spatial demand graph, accounting for geographical influences. For precision, ST-BDP integrates an attention-based graph convolutional network for station demand graph’s temporal-spatial features, and a sequential convolutional network for multi-source data ( e.g ., weather, time). In real dataset, experimental results show that ST-BDP has excellent performance with mean absolute error (MAE) = 1.62, mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) = 15.82%, symmetric mean absolute percentage error (SMAPE) = 16.14%, and root mean square error (RMSE) = 2.36, outperforming the baseline techniques. This highlights its predictive accuracy and potential to guide future bike-sharing policies.