Pricing

Advancing Social Equity and Congestion Relief: Understanding the Travel Needs of Underserved Populations That Rely on Transportation Network Companies in the San Francisco Bay Area

Susan Shaheen, Kate Gosselin, Jacquelyn Broader, Adam Cohen
2022

Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) enable travelers to order and pay for rides on-demand using an online application that connects them with drivers using their personal vehicles. While these modes present opportunities to increase individual mobilityand access, they also can worsen congestion and increase vehicle emissions. Researchers explored factors impacting the willingness to use pooled TNCs and identifiedstrategies/policies that could be employed to reduce congestion from TNC use. Researchers conducted a literature review, interviews with TNC experts, semi-structured interviews...

Advancing Road User Charge (RUC) Models in California: Understanding Social Equity and Travel Behavior Impacts

Jessica Lazarus, Jacquelyn Broader, Adam Cohen, Alexandre Bayen, Susan Shaheen
2022

California is currently exploring a mileage-based road user charge (RUC) program as an alternative to the existing gas tax. This research explores the potential social equity implications of this change through a literature review, expert interviews (N=21), general population survey (N = 3,489; final N = 3,061), and discrete choice model. The literature review and expert interviews reveal that populations that may face equity concerns include women, rural residents, un- and under-banked households, and low-income individuals. However, various strategies and program design considerations...

Understanding Curb Management and Targeted Incentive Policies to Increase Transportation Network Company Pooling and Public Transit Linkages

Susan Shaheen, Wesley Darling, Jacquelyn Broader, Adam Cohen
2021

Transportation network company (TNCs) rides that are shared amongst users (i.e., pooled) can offer a variety of benefits including increased mobility and reduced transportation emissions. However, very few TNC users select pooled trips and not all pooled rides are matched with other riders. This report supports increased poolingby exploring different pooling strategies and incentives. TNC userswere actively engagedto offer insightsthrough the...

What It Will Take for Kathy Hochul to Get Congestion Pricing Right

August 26, 2021

A man wearing a grey sweatshirt and black sweatpants rides a bicycle between three public transit buses

When Governor Kathy Hochul was sworn in Tuesday just after midnight, water was still pooled in the subway stations from the MTA’s second catastrophic flooding in as many months. It was emblematic in so many ways of the transportation crisis she was...

Mobility on Demand Planning and Implementation: Current Practices, Innovations, and Emerging Mobility Futures

Susan Shaheen, Adam Cohen, Jacquelyn Broader, Richard Davis, Les Brown, Radha Neelekantan, Deepak Gopalakrishna
2020

This report provides Mobility on Demand (MOD) planning and implementation practices and tools to support communities. The report discusses different stakeholders in the MOD ecosystem and the role of partnerships in filling spatial, temporal, and other service gaps. Additionally, the report discusses how MOD can be integrated into transportation planning and modeling. The report also discusses shared mobility implementation considerations, such as rights-of-way management, multimodal integration, data sharing, equity, labor impacts, and the role of pilot evaluations. Finally, the...

Policy Brief: Social Equity Impacts of Congestion Management Strategies

Susan Shaheen, PhD; Adam Stocker; Ruth Meza
2019

To better understand the equity implications of a variety of congestion management strategies, researchers at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) at University of California, Berkeley analyzed existing literature on congestion management strategies and findings from 12 expert interviews. The literature review applies the Spatial – Temporal – Economic – Physiological – Social (STEPS) Equity Framework1 to identify impacts and classify whether social equity barriers are reduced, exacerbated, or both by a particular strategy. The congestion management strategies of...

Social Equity Impacts of Congestion Management Strategies

Susan Shaheen, PhD; Adam Stocker; Ruth Meza
2019

This white paper examines the social equity impacts of various congestion management strategies. The paper includes a comprehensive list of 30 congestion management strategies and a discussion of equity implications related to each strategy. The authors analyze existing literature and incorporate findings from 12 expert interviews from academic, non-governmental organization (NGO), public, and private sector respondents to strengthen results and fill gaps in understanding. The literature review applies the Spatial – Temporal – Economic – Physiological – Social (STEPS) Equity Framework (...