Shared Mobility

As of October 2014, carsharing was operating in 33 countries, five continents, and an estimated 1,531 cities with approximately 4.8 million members sharing over 104,000 vehicles. Europe, the largest carsharing region measured by membership, accounts for 46% of worldwide membership and 56% of global fleets deployed. The world’s second largest carsharing market, North America, accounts for 34% of worldwide members and 23% of vehicle fleets. In 2014, Mexico maintained the highest member-vehicle ratios (131:1), followed by 107:1 in Italy.

TRB’s E-Circular 210: Multimobility and Sharing Economy: Shaping the Future Market Through Policy and Research Multimodal explores the results of a workshop that focused on new developments in the shared-mobility sphere, the use of smartphones in pushing the goal of shared mobility forward, and on rural and suburban mobility problems. It also raised the issue of equity for paratransit options in relation to innovative transportation modes and touched on strategies that could foster an environment of increased inclusion. Automated vehicles also were considered at the workshop, namely...

Transforming urban mobility requires integrating public with private services into a single transportation system. Local governments and private companies face the challenge of how to coordinate themselves. An emblematic example is one-way carsharing (shared use of a fleet of vehicles that are typically free-floating throughout an urban area). Surprisingly, good practices for public and private players driving this change remain relatively undocumented. This paper proposes a systematic and balanced public-private approach to foster transportation innovation management. We review both...

Casual carpooling is an informal form of commuter ridesharing operating in Washington, D.C.; Houston, Texas; and San Francisco, California. In contrast to new forms of shared-use mobility, casual carpooling has been in existence for over 30 years and uses no information communication technology, and is entirely run informally by its users. Researchers have been fascinated by this phenomenon and have conducted studies in the past, but there remains a lack of up-to-date quantitative data. This study examines the motivations and behaviors of casual carpoolers in the San Francisco Bay Area to...