Policy Brief: Shared Mobility Policies for California

In recent years, economic, environmental, and social forces have quickly given rise to the “sharing economy,” a collective of entrepreneurs and consumers leveraging technology to share resources, save money, and generate capital. Shared mobility—the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other low-speed travel mode—is an innovative transportation strategy that enables users to have short-term access to a transportation mode on an as-needed basis. Business-to-consumer services, such as Zipcar and car2go, and peer-to-peer carsharing and shared ride services, such as Getaround, Turo, Lyft, and Uber, have become part of a sociodemographic trend that has pushed shared mobility from the fringe to the mainstream. Local, regional, and state laws, ordinances, codes, zoning, and environmental policies can have unintended impacts on the success and viability of shared mobility in California (2).