Travel Behavior

Understanding Travel Behavior: Research Scan

Martin, Elliot
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Zohdy, Ismail
2016

Travel behavior is undergoing a period of significant change in the United States, and this change is beginning to reveal itself in long-standing measures of transportation. While the United States is still heavily dependent on the personal automobile for mobility, changes in technology, demographics, economics, and attitudes are transforming how mobility is attained. At the same time, advances in information technology are opening new ways for transportation activity to be measured more comprehensively. These transformative trends are reshaping how we think about transportation policy,...

Transportation Network Companies Might Be Pulling Riders from Public Transit, but This Could Change

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Martin, Elliot, PhD
Stocker, Adam
2023

Transportation Network Companies (TNCs, also known as ridehailing and ridesourcing) have expanded across California over the past decade and changed the way people travel. Using a smartphone, travelers can quickly summon a vehicle from almost anywhere and know what the estimated wait time, travel time, and cost will be before stepping into the vehicle. While TNCs are clearly addressing an unmet need for travelers, their growing popularity has raised a number of policy questions, including if TNCs are shifting people away from public transit and other travel modes (e.g., carshare, walking,...

A Short History of Carsharing in the 90's

Shaheen, Susan A.
Sperling, Daniel
Wagner, Conrad
1999

From: A Short History of Carsharing in the 90's. Journal of World Transport Policy & Practice 5 (3), 18 - 40 The vast majority of automobile trips in U.S. metropolitan regions are drive-alone car trips. In 1990, approximately 90 percent of work trips and 58 percent of nonwork trips in the United States were made by vehicles with only one occupant (United States Department of Transportation, 1995). Vehicles are unused an average of 23 hours per day. This form of transportation is expensive and consumes large amounts of land. Private vehicles are attractive. Their universal appeal is...

Smartphone App Evolution and Early Understanding from a Multimodal App User Survey

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Cohen, Adam
Martin, Elliot, PhD
2017

Travelers are increasingly turning to smartphone applications for an array of transportation functions. Four types of transportation apps have emerged: 1) mobility apps; 2) connected vehicle apps; 3) smart parking apps; and 4) courier network service (CNS) apps. This chapter discusses the history and trends leading to the growth and development of transportation apps and summarizes key characteristics of 83 transportation apps identified through an Internet search cataloging transportation apps with more than 10,000 downloads each. Seventy-one percent of the 83 apps identified incorporated...

Just A Better Taxi? A Survey-Based Comparison of Taxis, Transit, and Ridesourcing Services in San Francisco

Rayle, Lisa
Dai, Danielle
Chan, Nelson
Cervero, Robert
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2016

In this study, we present exploratory evidence of how “ridesourcing” services (app-based, on-demand ride services like Uber and Lyft) are used in San Francisco. We explore who uses ridesourcing and for what reasons, how the ridesourcing market compares to that of traditional taxis, and how ridesourcing impacts the use of public transit and overall vehicle travel. In spring 2014, 380 completed intercept surveys were collected from three ridesourcing “hot spots” in San Francisco. We compare survey results with matched-pair taxi trip data and results of a previous taxi user survey. We also...

Carsharing and Partnership Management: An International Perspective

Shaheen, Susan
Sperling, Dan
Wagner, Conrad
2004

Most cars carry one person and are used for less than 1 hour per day. A more economically rational approach would be to use vehicles more intensively. Carsharing, in which a group of people pays a subscription plus a per-use fee, is one means of doing so. Carsharing may be organized through affinity groups, large employers, transit operators, neighborhood groups, or large carsharing businesses. Relative to car ownership, carsharing has the disadvantage of less convenient vehicle access but the advantages of a large range of vehicles, fewer ownership responsibilities, and less cost (if...

Evolution of E-Mobility in Carsharing Business Models

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Chan, Nelson
2014

Carsharing continues to grow worldwide as a powerful strategy to provide an alternative to solo driving. The viability of electric vehicles, or EVs, has been exam-ined in various carsharing business models. Moreover, new technologies have given rise to electromobility, or e-mobility, systems. This paper discusses the evolution of e-mobility in carsharing business models and the challenges and opportunities that EVs present to carsharing operators around the world. Operators are now anticipating in-creased EV proliferation into vehicle fleets over the next 5-10 years as technology,...

An Evaluation of Via Rideshare Service in West Sacramento: An Exploratory Analysis Through Surveys and Expert Interviews

Martin, Elliot, PhD
Nichols, Aqshems
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2019

The UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) conducted an evaluation for the City of West Sacramento of the pilot Via Rideshare System, which began providing rides to customers in May of 2018 and is currently in operation. This analysis presents the findings from surveys and expert interviews. Surveys were deployed to both users and non-users of the pilot service in order to assess the behavioral impacts of the system on users and to evaluate non-user response to the system and why they had not yet opted to not use the service. The user survey, which collected 224...

Roundtrip Carsharing in New York City: An Evaluation of a Pilot Program and System Impacts

Martin, Elliot, PhD
Stocker, Adam
Nichols, Aqshems
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2021

The study found that roundtrip carsharing in NYC mostly serves as a substitute for car rental, other personal vehicle modes, and personal vehicle ownership. The analysis showed that the broader pilot program had a modest impact on user behavior through carsharing (i.e., reduced vehicle ownership, reduced VMT, and mode shift). It also found that the pilot program likely expanded the membership base of carsharing to demographic cohorts that are traditionally underrepresented in carsharing populations (i.e., increased participation by lower education levels, lower household incomes, minority...

Bridging the Income and Digital Divide with Shared Automated Electric Vehicles

Lazarus, Jessica
Bauer, Gordon, PhD
Greenblatt, Jeffery, PhD
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2021

This research investigates strategies to improve the mobility of low-income travelers by incentivizing the use of electric SAVs (SAEVs) and public transit. We employ two agent-based simulation engines, an activity-based travel demand model of the San Francisco Bay Area, and vehicle movement data from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin to model emergent travel behavior of commute trips in response to subsidies for TNCs and public transit. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the impacts of different subsidy scenarios on mode choices, TNC pooling and match rates,...