Shared Mobility

Shared Automated Mobility: Early Exploration and Potential Impacts

Adam Stocker
Susan Shaheen, PhD
2017

Automated vehicles, if shared, have the potential to blur the lines between public and private transportation services. This chapter reviews possible future shared automated vehicle (SAV) business models and their potential impacts on travel behavior. By examining the impacts of non-automated shared mobility services like carsharing and ridesourcing, we foster a better understanding of how current shared mobility services affect user behavior. This serves as a starting point to explore the potential impact of SAV services. Several key studies covering the topic are discussed....

Smartphone Applications to Influence Travel Choices: Practices and Policies

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2016

This primer provides an overview of current practices in this emerging field and looks toward the future in the evolution and development of smartphone applications for the transportation sector. The primer provides an introduction and overview smartphone applications (known as “apps”); discusses the background, evolution, and development of smartphone apps; reviews the types of smartphone applications promoting transportation efficiency and congestion reduction; discusses transportation apps and their impacts on traveler behavior; examines current challenges; and concludes with...

Shared Mobility: Current Practices and Guiding Principles

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2016

This primer provides an introduction and background to shared mobility; discusses the government’s role; reviews success stories; examines challenges, lessons learned, and proposed solutions; and concludes with guiding principles for public agencies. The primer provides an overview of current practices in this emerging field, and it also looks toward the future in the evolution and development of shared mobility.

Mobile Apps and Transportation: A Review of Smartphone Apps and a Study of User Response to Multimodal Traveler Information

Shaheen, PhD, Elliot Martin, PhD, Adam Cohen, Apoorva Musunuri, and Abhinav Bhattacharyya
2016

In recent years, technological and social forces have pushed smartphone applications (apps) from the fringe to the mainstream. Understanding the role of transportation apps in urban mobility is important for policy development and transportation planners. This study evaluates the role and impact of multimodal aggregators from a variety of perspectives, including a literature review; a review of the most innovative, disruptive, and highest-rated transportation apps; interviews with experts in the industry, and a user survey of former multimodal aggregator RideScout users. Between...

Mobility On Demand: Operational Concept Report

Susan Shaheen, PhD, Adam Cohen, Balaji Yelchuru, and Sara Sarkhili
2017

This operational concept report provides an overview of the Mobility on Demand (MOD) concept and its evolution, description of the MOD ecosystem in a supply and demand framework, and its stakeholders and enablers. Leveraging the MOD ecosystem framework, this report reviews the key enablers of the system including business models and partnerships, land use and different urbanization scenarios, social equity and environmental justice, policies and standards, and enabling technologies. This review is mostly focused on the more recent forms of MOD (e.g., shared mobility).

Travel Behavior: Shared Mobility and Transportation Equity

Susan Shaheen, PhD, Corwin Bell, Adam Cohen, Balaji Yelchuru
2017

Shared mobility—the shared use of a motor vehicle, bicycle, or other low-speed transportation mode that allows users to obtain short-term access to transportation on an as-needed basis—has the potential to help address some transportation equity challenges. In an effort to categorize the myriad of transportation equity barriers facing transportation system users, this primer proposes a ‘STEPS to Transportation Equity’ framework including: Spatial, Temporal, Economic, Physiological, and Social barriers. For each barrier category, shared mobility opportunities and challenges are...

Policy Brief: Impacts of Shared Mobility, Pooling

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2018

Shared-ride services—transportation modes that allow riders to share a ride to a common destination—include various forms of ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling); ridesplitting and taxisplitting; and microtransit. With the proliferation of smartphones and mobile Internet, it has become more convenient to share rides. Shared-ride services are having a transformative impact on many global cities by increasing vehicle occupancy through smartphone apps.

Policy Brief: Equity and Shared Mobility

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2018

Ensuring equal access for protected classes impacted by shared mobility services is critical. In California, this can include provisions mandating access for individuals with disabilities, as well as prohibitions in discrimination against other protected classes. Many of these laws not only prohibit discrimination against the end user but also shared mobility employees. In addition to prohibiting discrimination, it is imperative to ensure shared mobility is accessible to all. Equitable treatment of shared mobility providers (e.g., data, insurance, licensing) is also a key...

Policy Brief: Shared Mobility Policies for California

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2018

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...

Policy Brief: Smartphone Applications and Data Impacting Transportation

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2018

Demographic shifts, improvements in computing power and mapping technology, the use of cloud computing, and changes in wireless communication — coupled with the growth of data availability and data sharing — are changing the way people travel. Increasingly, mobility consumers are turning to smartphone “apps” for a wide array of transportation activities including: vehicle routing, real-time data on congestion, information regarding roadway incidents and construction, parking availability, and real-time transit arrival predictions. Travel time savings (e.g., high occupancy vehicle...