Shared Mobility

How St. Louis Took a Proactive Approach to E-Scooter Regulation

November 18, 2019
Cinnamon Janzer

Lime scooter

November 14, 2019

As practically anyone living in an urban area has experienced first hand, e-scooter companies have tended to take an “ask for forgiveness, not permission” approach to deploying fleets of e-scooters in cities across the world with little to no notice beforehand. While this disruption-based method has left many cities scrambling to reactivity figure out how to manage the chance, St....

Car Sharing Service Turo Relies on Data to Get Ahead in Crowded Rental Market

October 22, 2019
Mark Hamstra

Turo Office

When it comes to marketing, Turo tries to make every dollar count.

The company — sometimes referred to as the “Airbnb of car rentals” — was founded in 2009 with operations in San Francisco and Boston, and has since expanded to more than 5,000 cities across the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the U.K. It competes not only against established car rental giants such as National, Enterprise, Dollar, Avis and Hertz,...

Can the Sharing Economy be Leveraged in Disaster Relief? Lessons from California

September 12, 2019
Susan Shaheen, PhD, Stephen Wong, and Adam Cohen

aftereffects of a wildfire

Natural and man-made disasters and their emergency evacuations are more common than many people realize, and remain a common strategy to ensure safety. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the most frequent causes of evacuations in the U.S. each year are fires and floods. Due to the heavy reliance on private vehicles in the U.S.,...

Can smart mobility solutions answer transit’s first/last mile challenge?

July 3, 2019
The Globe and Mail

picture of cover page of new item

In a business park on the northwest side of Denver, an autonomous all-electric bus has been shuttling commuters from the 61st and Pena commuter rail station to the building that houses the offices of Panasonic and EasyMile.

The first of its kind in Colorado, the shuttle moves people from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday, as part of a...

Shuttle Express Into the Future

June 14, 2019
Bosch

cover of news store on automated shuttles

Does the future of our everyday mobility lie in self-driving shuttle busses? Professor Susan Shaheen has looked into how this new form of mobility can be organized equitably for everybody. She says the transition on our roads has already begun.

Read the full article here:...

Leveraging the Sharing Economy to Expand Shelter and Transportation Resources in California Evacuations

Stephen Wong
Susan Shaheen, PhD
2019

policy brief on evacuations

In 2017 and 2018, California was severely impacted by a number of devastating wildfires that required thousands of people to evacuate. These evacuations were hampered by poor communication, traffic congestion, and transportation and shelter resource deficiencies. To ensure that all citizens have both transportation and shelter in evacuations, agencies must...

How can companies like Airbnb, Lyft or Uber help in disasters?

June 19, 2019
Linda Vu

photo of researcher Stephen Wong

In the past few years, devastating California wildfires have forced more than half a million people to evacuate their homes. In many cases, local government agencies did not have enough resources to transport and shelter all of the evacuees, especially vulnerable populations like the elderly and disabled. Meanwhile those who...

Current State of the Sharing Economy and Evacuations: Lessons from California

Stephen Wong
Susan Shaheen, PhD
2019

In many evacuations including wildfire evacuations, public agencies often do not have enough resources to evacuate and shelter all citizens. Consequently, we propose that the sharing economy, through private companies and/or private citizens, could be leveraged in disasters for transportation and sheltering resources. To assess this feasibility, we distributed surveys to individuals impacted by three major wildfires in California: 1) the 2017 October Northern California Wildfires (n=79), 2) the 2017 December Southern California Wildfires (n=226), and 3) the 2018 Carr Wildfire (n=284...

Bikesharing in Europe, the Americas, and Asia: Past, Present and Future

Susan Shaheen
Stacey Guzman
Hua Zhang
2010

Growing concerns over global motorization and climate change have led to increasing interest in sustainable transportation alternatives, such as bikesharing (the shared use of a bicycle fleet). Since 1965, bikesharing has grown across the globe on four continents including: Europe, North America, South America, and Asia (including Australia). Today, there are approximately 100 bikesharing programs operating in an estimated 125 cities around the world with over 139,300 bicycles. Bikesharing’s evolution is categorized into three generations: 1) White Bikes (or Free Bike Systems); 2)...

TSRC Study Earns Transport Policy Prize

June 4, 2019
ITS Berkeley

cover page of transport policy journal

Congratulations to Transportation Sustainability Research Center Co-Director and Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Susan Shaheen, Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning Robert Cervero, and former graduate students Lisa Rayle (Data Science at Facebook), Danielle Dai (City of Oakland Mobility Programs Manager), and Nelson Chan (Interaction Designer at Internet...