Public bicycle systems (PBS) are becoming popular in many cities for environmental friendliness, convenience, and other merits. Imbalance of bicycles between stations may hinder users to lend or return public bicycles and influence the service quality of a PBS. This paper analyses the temporal pattern of a PBS's usage in Nanjing and then categorizes all stations into five clusters. A strategy to determine the optional stations is proposed based on the characteristics of different groups. Then, a model is established to obtain the optimal route for dispatching vehicles. Finally, a case study in Xuanwu District of Nanjing City is provided and presents that the strategy can narrow the scale of the redistribution scheme efficiently. The sensitivity analysis illustrates the moderate increase of initially dispatching bicycles in the depot can reduce the total operation cost.
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