Create a Written analysis of Citibike Data and consider what investors might want to know about Des Moines in order to decide whether a bike-sharing program would work there.
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The first step we took in our analysis is to look at who are the common users of the Citibike, and how it impacts the day to day usage.
First image reflects on Subscribers (Users who have a weekly/monthly/yearly membership) which are the major users of the bikesharing program, their usage peaks between 8a.m to 9a.m and then again at 4p.m to 7p.m. This is an indication of residents who are using the bikes to commute to work and back before and after business hours. Bike sharing is increasing in popularity amongst the younger croud, probably due to cost effeciency and ease of maneuverbility around the city during rush hours.
The second image shows us that visitors, or consumers who use the bike using a day pass, or one time pass is a smaller percentage of the business income. However, these users are using the bike throughout the day specially between 11a.m to 7p.m. We see the same pattern of youth opting to using the citibike over the older generation.
What is the population of Des Moines? How does its population compare to the population of New York City?
Overall population of Des Moines is estimated 214,237 on july 2019. This is significantly lower than New york County (Manhatten Borough) which is over 1.63 million people.
New York Boasted 65.2 Million visitors in 2019 from all over the world according to New York Times post (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/nyregion/nyc-tourism-record.html.) MasterCard also ranked New York at number 6 of cities most visited by tourists. This has a major impact on the bikesharing business, as the autmobile traffic grows, bikes will become increasingly popular to maneauver around the city. Currently there are 'six thousand bikes at more than three hundred stations in New York City' (https://chi.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/03/Bikeshare_TRB_submission.pdf)
According to some data found on citybikenyc.com, we gathered some interesting details (updated May 2020)
New York City-Bike: New York, NY
Total Users: 2,707,134 Members: 1,900,359 Casual: 443,865 Bicycles :14,500 Stations: 750+
Even though Des Moines has a smaller residential population, their visitor count is at 13.7 million per year according to a survey in 2016 by Catch Des Moines (https://www.catchdesmoines.com/articles/post/des-moines-draws-record-number-of-visitors-to-region/) which is no small feat. Annually there is a projected growth to the visitor count, and with lack of bikesharing competition it might be worth investigating investment potential.
Data below is from https://www.bikesharing.ch/ (updated May 2020)
Des Moines B-cycle : Des Moines, IA
Total users: 1,769 Members: 32 Casual: 1,737 Bicycles: 120+ Stations: 20
We see a shift in the user types in Des Moines compared to New York, Des Moines has more Casual users than subscribers, which is definitely an area of interest for investment potential. There is a huge potential for a bikesharing business model in Des Moines.
After looking at what citibike has acconplished in New York, Des Moines shows promise in the business potential