Shared Mobility

Carpooling allows travelers to share a ride to a common destination and can include several forms of sharing a ride, such as casual carpooling and real-time carpooling. Because carpooling reduces the number of automobiles needed by travelers, it is often associated with numerous societal benefitsincluding: 1) reductions in energy consumption and emissions, 2) congestion mitigation, and 3) reduced parking infrastructure demand. In recent years, economic, environmental, and social forces coupled with technological innovations are encouraging shared and pooled services. Shared mobility is...

Shared mobility with pooled rides is the linchpin for leveraging vehicle automation and electrification to reduce congestion and emissions and to create livable urban communities. The sharing of rides is older than horse-and-buggy travel. Recent innovations make sharing easier, more convenient, and more efficient. Innovative mobility services premised on pooling can lower travel costs, mitigate congestion, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They also offer travelers more mobility choices between the traditional bookends of auto ownership and public transit. While the realm of...

Shared mobility—the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other mode—is an innovative transportation strategy that enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an “as-needed” basis. Shared mobility includes various forms of carsharing, bikesharing, ridesharing, on-demand ride services, and microtransit. Additionally, smartphone and mobile “apps” aggregate and optimize these mobility services and are critical to many shared mobility modes. Courier network services connect couriers using their personal vehicles or bicycles with freight and seek to disrupt the...

This chapter examines the characteristics and practices of ridesharing users in France. In May 2013, the authors surveyed members of BlaBlaCar, the largest online and app-based carpooling service in France, to analyze the sociodemographic characteristics and usage patterns of the respondents. The survey results identify correlations between socio-demographic characteristics and usage elements. Notably, users with a lower income level are more inclined to be passengers, while higher income users employ carpooling mainly as drivers. Students are shown to be more frequent users as well...