Shared Mobility

Urban Air Mobility: Opportunities and Obstacles

Adam Cohen, Susan Shaheen, PhD
2021

Urban Air Mobility (UAM, also known as advanced air mobility) is an emerging concept that envisions a safe, sustainable, affordable, and accessible air transportation system for emergency management, cargo delivery, and passenger mobility within or traversing a metropolitan area. While numerous societal concerns have been raised about these approaches (e.g., privacy, safety, security, social equity), on-demand aviation has the potential to provide options for emergency services, goods delivery, and passenger mobility in urban and rural areas using small piloted and autonomous...

A Legal and Regulatory Assessment for the Potential of Urban Air Mobility (UAM)

Jacqueline Serrao, Sarah Nilsson, Shawn Kimmel
2018

This paper reviews existing and anticipated legal and regulatory requirements for urban air mobility. It also discusses variations in requirements observed at the local and state levels of government; international developments; certification issues; and opportunities to address legal barriers and gaps.

An Initial Assessment of the Potential Weather Barriers of Urban Air Mobility

Colleen Reiche, PhD, Adam Cohen, Chris Fernando
2021

Urban Air Mobility (UAM), a subset of advanced air mobility, is a concept that envisions safe, sustainable, affordable, and accessible air transportation for passenger mobility, cargo delivery, and emergency management within or traversing a metropolitan area. In recent years, several companies have designed and tested enabling elements of this concept, including; prototypes of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, operational concepts, and market studies to understand potential business models. While UAM may be enabled by the convergence of several factors, a number of barriers...

The Potential Societal Barriers of Urban Air Mobility

Susan Shaheen, PhD, Adam Cohen, Emily Farrar
2018

Community perceptions of users and non-users could present challenges to adoption and mainstreaming of urban air mobility (UAM). A few potential concerns include noise and visual pollution; privacy (particularly for flights over sensitive land uses); social equity; and safety and security. This exploratory study reports the findings of two focus groups in Los Angeles and Washington D.C., and a five-city general population survey consisting of 1,700 respondents in Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. (approximately 350 respondents per city). The focus...

Top Ten California Automated Vehicle Policy Strategies

September 23, 2021

Image of a small, red boxy automated vehicle in front of some trees and shrubbery on a road

Research teams at the University of California Davis and Berkeley campuses have developed a menu of options to set California on a path toward automated vehicle safety, social equity, mobility, and sustainability.

Read the full article...

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) First and Last Mile Solution Evaluation Report

Elliot Martin
Adam Stocker
Adam Cohen
Susan Shaheen
Les Brown
2021

The Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration Program provides a venue through which integrated MOD concepts and strategies, supported through local partnerships, are demonstrated in real-world settings. For the 11 MOD Sandbox Demonstration projects, an independent evaluation was conducted that includes an analysis of project impacts from performance measures provided by the project partners and an assessment of the business models used.

This document presents the results from the independent evaluation of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) First and Last Mile Solution MOD...

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Ventra–Divvy Integration Case Study

Adam Cohen
Susan Shaheen
Jacquelyn Broader
Elliot Martin
Les Brown
2021

The Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Program provides a venue through which integrated MOD concepts and strategies, supported through local partnerships, are demonstrated in real-world settings. This case study documents lessons learned from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) MOD Sandbox Demonstration, called Ventra–Divvy Integration. The case study is a part of an independent evaluation of the MOD Sandbox Demonstrations sponsored by the USDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) and FTA.

The case study includes...

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) OpenTripPlanner

Elliot Martin, Aqshems Nichols, Adam Cohen, Susan Shaheen, Les Brown
2021

This report documents the results of an independent evaluation of the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s (VTrans) OpenTripPlanner (OTP), called Go! Vermont, part of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration program. The project intended to serve as an alternative to other trip planners by including flexible transit options such as route deviation, dial-a-ride, and other demand-responsive alternatives and to analyze web traffic data to determine the level of user activity attracted by Go! Vermont since its launch. The evaluation compared the...

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Valley Metro Mobility Platform Evaluation Report

Elliot Martin
Ziad Yassine
Adam Cohen
Susan Shaheen
Les Brown
2020

This report evaluates the Valley Metro Mobility Platform project, part of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox program. Valley Metro currently provides a Valley Metro RidekickTM mobile application for its users that features tripplanning for light rail and buses. The Mobility Platform project aimed to develop new trip planning features and an integrated payment ...

MOD Sandbox Demonstrations Independent Evaluation: Los Angeles County and Puget Sound MOD First and Last Mile Partnership with Via Evaluation Plan

Gustave Cordahi
Susan Shaheen, PhD
Elliot Martin, PhD
Mikaela Hoffman-Stapleton
2018

The MOD Sandbox Demonstrations are sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). The MOD Sandbox Demonstrations Independent Evaluation is sponsored by the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), jointly by the Intelligent Transportation Systems - Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) and the FTA. All documents are USDOT publications. You may access the document at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vv4f7ks

Through a partnership-driven approach, LA Metro, KCM, ST, and Via (an on-...