A Unified Real-Time Dashboard for Multi-City Bike-Sharing Systems

Abstract

Bike-sharing systems have emerged as a crucial component of urban mobility infrastructure across major metropolitan areas. While these systems provide significant benefits for sustainable transportation, the disparate nature of monitoring platforms poses challenges for both users and transportation planners. In response to this, this paper presents a unified real-time dashboard that integrates multiple bike-sharing systems across major North American cities. Notably, selected bike-share systems generate 86 percent of total trips in 2023. These cities include Boston (Bluebikes), Washington, D.C. (Capital Bikeshare), Chicago (Divvy), New York City (Citi Bike), Montreal (BIXI), San Francisco (Bay Wheels), and Toronto (Bike Share). Furthermore, our dashboard implements a scalable architecture that uses the General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) to aggregate and visualize real-time data from multiple bike-sharing networks through a single interface. The system employs a configuration-based approach that facilitates the easy integration of additional cities and bike-sharing systems. Built on a Pythonbased stack utilizing Panel for the user interface and Folium for interactive mapping, the dashboard provides comprehensive visualization of system status, including conventional and electric bicycle availability, docking station capacity, and operational status across all integrated networks.