Travel Behavior

Shared Mobility: The Potential of Ride Hailing and Pooling

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2018

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...

An Evaluation of Free-Floating Carsharing in Oakland, California

Martin, Elliot, PhD
Pan, Alexandra
Shaheen, Susan
2020

GIG Car Share is a free-floating carsharing system that began operations in the East Bay in April 2017. Similar to other free-floating carsharing systems, such as car2go and ReachNow (which later combined as ShareNow), members of GIG have access to a fleet of vehicles which they can book and unlock via an app. Once booking the vehicle, members can drive anywhere, but must park back in the home zone in order to terminate their session. The price of driving a GIG vehicle is charged per hour, per mile, or per day, and is calculated based on the lowest cost to the user. This report uses the...

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) OpenTripPlanner

Martin, Elliot
Nichols, Aqshems
Cohen, Adam
Shaheen, Susan
2021

This report documents the results of an independent evaluation of the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s (VTrans) OpenTripPlanner (OTP), called Go! Vermont, part of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration program. The project intended to serve as an alternative to other trip planners by including flexible transit options such as route deviation, dial-a-ride, and other demand-responsive alternatives and to analyze web traffic data to determine the level of user activity attracted by Go! Vermont since its launch. The evaluation compared the...

Generic Time- and Method-Interdependencies of Empirical Impact-Measurements: A Generalizable Model of Adaptation-Processes of Carsharing-Users' Mobility-Behavior Over Time

Firnkorn, Jörg
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2016

The purpose of this article is to advance empirical sustainability-evaluations of carsharing-systems. Carsharing, a frequently cited example of a product–service system (PSS), is currently morphing from a niche into a mainstream mode of transportation. Carsharing has the potential to provide a more sustainable mobility-option compared to private car usage, for example by reducing the overall motor-vehicle traffic in cities. However, the quantification of this potential is complex, and few studies have analyzed the fundamental impacts of the chosen measurement-methodology on the results of...

Shared Mobility: A Sustainability & Technologies Workshop: Definitions, Industry Developments, and Early Understanding

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Chan, Nelson
Bansal, Apaar
Cohen, Adam
2015

Shared mobility - the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other mode - enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an “as-needed” basis. Shared mobility includes carsharing, bikesharing, ridesharing, and on-demand ride services. It can also include alternative transit services, such as paratransit, shuttles, and private transit services. Smartphone “apps” are available to aggregate options and optimize routes. New ways of transporting and delivering goods also have emerged with the potential to change the nature of the package and food delivery industry. Shared...

Future of Work: Scenario Planning for COVID-19 Recovery

Pan, Alexandra
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2022

The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread lockdowns across the world in early 2020, with major implications to spatial and temporal commuting patterns as a result of increased work from home (also known as telework) activities. There has been a high degree of uncertainty on what work from home impacts will persist in the future. In this report, we first conduct a thorough review of news articles, published reports, and peer-reviewed literature to summarize telework trends. We also use scenario planning to bring together ten experts from academia, public sector, industry, and commercial real...

Automated Vehicles, On-Demand Mobility and Environmental Impacts

Greenblatt, Jeffery
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2015

We review the history, current developments, projected future trends and environmental impacts of automated vehicles (AVs) and on-demand mobility, and explore potential synergies. Many automobile manufacturers and Google plan to release AVs between 2017 and 2020, with potential benefits including increased safety, more efficient road use, increased driver productivity and energy savings. Estimates of AV energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions range from an ~80 % or greater decrease to a threefold increase; however, we argue that net decreases are likely. On-demand mobility services...

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Bay Area Rapid Transit Integrated Carpool to Transit Access Program Evaluation Report

Martin, Elliot
Cohen, Adam
Yassine, Ziad
Brown, Les
Shaheen, Susan
2020

The Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration Program provides a venue through which integrated MOD concepts and solutions, supported through local partnerships, are demonstrated in real-world settings. For each of the 11 MOD Sandbox Demonstration projects, a MOD Sandbox Independent Evaluation was conducted that includes an analysis of project impacts from performance measures provided by the project partners and an assessment of the business models used. This document presents the Evaluation Report for the BART Integrated Carpool to Transit Access Program project. The project tested...

Advancing Road User Charge (RUC) Models in California: Understanding Social Equity and Travel Behavior Impacts

Lazarus, Jessica
Broader, Jacquelyn
Cohen, Adam
Bayen, Alexander, PhD
Shaheen, Susan, PhD
2022

The State of California is currently moving forward with a road usage charge (RUC) demonstration program, creating promising research opportunities to examine the potential social equity implications of a shift from a gas tax to a RUC system in California. RUC . To this aim, this study investigates the relative burden of gas taxes and mileage-based RUC across various sociodemographic and geographic dimensions by examining key trends in road use, vehicle ownership, fuel consumption, use of RUC-related technologies, and attitudes/opinions related to RUC adoption. Expert interviews were...

How Public Education on Ecodriving Can Reduce Both Fuel Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Martin, Elliot W.
Chan, Nelson D.
Shaheen, Susan A.
2012

Ecodriving, the concept of changing driving behavior and vehicle maintenance to impact fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in existing vehicles, has gained recent prominence in North America. One ecodriving strategy involves public education through Internet-based information dissemination. This paper presents the results of a controlled stated-response study conducted from June to December 2010 with approximately 100 University of California, Berkeley faculty, staff, and students, assessing the effectiveness of static ecodriving web-based information. A comparison of the...