Environment

Power Trips: Early Understanding of Preparedness and Travel Behavior During California Public Safety Power Shutoff Events

Wong, Steven D.
Broader, Jacquelyn C.
Shaheen, Susan A.
2022

Recent wildfire risks in California have prompted the implementation of public safety power shutoff (PSPS) events, procedures enacted by utility operators to de-energize parts of the electrical grid and reduce the likelihood of wildfire ignition. Despite their yearly occurrence, PSPS events are severely understudied, and little is known about how these events impact disaster preparation activity, travel behavior, and transportation systems. With growing wildfire risks in North America and beyond, PSPS events require immediate and thorough research to reduce their negative externalities and...

Mobility and Energy Impacts of Shared Automated Vehicles: A Review of Recent Literature

Shaheen, Susan
Bouzaghrane, Mahamed Amine
2019

The purpose of this review is to present findings from recent research on Shared automated vehicles (SAV) impacts on mobility and energy. While the literature on potential SAV impacts on travel behavior and the environment is still developing, researchers have suggested that SAVs could reduce transportation costs and incur minimal increases in total trip time due to efficient routing to support pooling. Researchers also speculate that SAVs would result in a 55% reduction in energy use and ~ 90% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.SAV impacts on mobility and energy are uncertain....

Reducing Greenhouse Emissions and Fuel Consumption: Sustainable Approaches for Surface Transportation

Shaheen, Susan A.
Lipman, Timothy E.
2007

Climate change is rapidly becoming known as a tangible issue that must be addressed to avoid major environmental consequences in the future. Recent change in public opinion has been caused by the physical signs of climate change–melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more severe storm and drought events, and hotter average global temperatures annually. Transportation is a major contributor of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, accounting for approximately 14 percent of total anthropogenic emissions globally and about 27 percent in the U.S.Fortunately...

Concurrent Air Quality Analysis Under the National Environmental Policy Act and Transportation/Air Quality Conformity

Shaheen, Susan
Guensler, Randall
Mar, Francisca
1995

This paper addresses the direct and indirect relationships between the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the new conformity requirements. This paper concludes that NEPA and transportation/air quality conformity processes should be concurrent. The need for concurrent determinations is supported by five arguments: 1) the legislative history of conformity indicates that project conformity determinations be made during the NEPA process; 2) general NEPA requirements specify coordination between environmental processes; 3) the level of technical detail required for conformity analyses...

Impacts of Car2go on Vehicle Ownership, Modal Shift, Vehicle Miles Traveled, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: An Analysis of Five North American Cities

Martin, Elliot
Shaheen, Susan
2016

Car2go is currently the largest carsharing operator in the world, with a presence in nine countries and nearly 30 cities. It operates as a one-way instant access carsharing system within a pre-defined urban zone. Members can find an unoccupied parked vehicle, access it immediately, and use it to meet their local travel needs. As long as the vehicle is parked within the operating zone, users...

Transit-Based Smart Parking in the San Francisco Bay Area, California: Assessment of User Demand and Behavioral Effects

Rodier, Caroline J.
Shaheen, Susan A.
Eaken, Amanda M.
2005

This paper presents early findings from an application of advanced parking technologies to increase effective parking capacity at a transit station during the first half of 2004 in the San Francisco Bay Area (CA). It begins with an extensive review of the literature related to transit-based smart parking management systems to illustrate the range of system configurations and their potential travel, economic, and environmental effects. Two important conclusions from this review are: (1) lack of parking spaces at transit stations may be a significant constraint to transit use and (2) pre-...

Trust and Compassion in Willingness to Share Mobility and Sheltering Resources in Evacuations: A case Study of the 2017 and 2018 California Wildfires

Wong, Steven D.
Walker, Joan L.
Shaheen, Susan A.
2020

Advances in the sharing economy – such as transportation network companies (e.g., Lyft, Uber) and home sharing (e.g., Airbnb) – have coincided with the increasing need for evacuation resources. While peer-to-peer sharing under normal circumstances often suffers from trust barriers, disaster literature indicates that trust and compassion often increase following disasters, improving recovery efforts. We hypothesize that trust and compassion could trigger willingness to share transportation and sheltering resources during an evacuation.To test this hypothesis, we distributed a survey to...

Chapter 13 - Sharing Strategies: Carsharing, Shared Micromobility (Bikesharing and Scooter Sharing), Transportation Network Companies, Microtransit, and other Innovative Mobility Modes

Shaheen, Susan
Cohen, Adam
Chan, Nelson
Bansal, Apaar
2019

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. It includes various forms of carsharing, bikesharing, scooter sharing, ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling), transportation network companies (TNCs), and microtransit. Included in this ecosystem are smartphone “apps” that aggregate and optimize these mobility options, as well as “courier network services” that provide last mile package and food delivery. This chapter describes different...

Bikesharing across the Globe

Shaheen, Susan
Guzman, Stacey
Zhang, Hua
2012

Concerns about global climate change, energy security, and unstable fuel prices have caused many decision makers and policy experts worldwideto closely examine the need for more sustainable transportation strategies. Sustainable strategies include clean fuels, vehicle technologies, transportation demand management, and integrated land use and transportation strategies (Shaheen and Lipman 2007). Bikesharing—the shared use of a bicycle fleet—is one mobility strategy that could help address many of these concerns. In recent years, interest in this evolving concept has spread across the globe...

Dynamics in Behavioral Response to Fuel-Cell Vehicle Fleet and Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure

Shaheen, Susan
Martin, Elliot
Lipman, Timothy E.
2008

Transportation is a major contributor of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. It accounts for approximately 14% of total anthropogenic emissions globally and about 27% in the United States. Growing concern regarding the impacts of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions has led to innovations in automotive and fueltechnology. However, behavioral response to the newest transportation technologies, such as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) and fueling infrastructure, is not well understood. This paper examines the results of an exploratory F-Cell...