Shared Mobility

Shared mobility is gaining increasing attention in private and public sectors. Serving as a source of information on how best to shape shared vehicle systems of the future, this book contributes knowledge on key facets of shared mobility. It includes shared vehicle systems as well as shared automated vehicle systems.

Shared Mobility offers a current view on one of the most significant economic activities in recent years. While most studies investigate shared mobility services and transportation piecemeal by city, mode, or company, this book focuses on transportation network companies themselves, highlighting shared bikes and E-scooters. Sections cover how they perform at the local or regional level in an effort to help governments better plan and regulate these emerging services. Shared Mobility explores the opportunities and challenges in these new systems and provides a thorough and succinct reference text for researchers, graduate students, and professionals in the fields of transportation planning, transportation engineering, and urban planning. Examines data collected from the author’s extensive multi-year lab study on shared mobility and transportation Offers a detailed quantitative analysis of shared mobility activities and their impacts on people and cities Explores the interactions between shared mobility modes and policy outcomes

This book explores the opportunities and challenges of the sharing economy and innovative transportation technologies with regard to urban mobility. Written by government experts, social scientists, technologists and city planners from North America, Europe and Australia, the papers in this book address the impacts of demographic, societal and economic trends and the fundamental changes arising from the increasing automation and connectivity of vehicles, smart communication technologies, multimodal transit services, and urban design. The book is based on the Disrupting Mobility Summit held in Cambridge, MA (USA) in November 2015, organized by the City Science Initiative at MIT Media Lab, the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley, the LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Politics and the Innovation Center for Mobility and Societal Change in Berlin.

This CERRE report finds that to effectively reduce congestion and pollution in cities, policies should focus primarily on the rarest resource: space. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) also has a role to play in the transition towards truly sustainable mobility. But this is provided regulation guarantees that new mobility models complement and not substitute for public transport. European cities have been trying to enhance their mobility and transport systems, while reducing congestion, pollution, CO2 emissions, noise and accidents. Local transport policies across countries strive to encourage car drivers to switch to public transport, but with limited success. The authors of the report find that the lack of success of policies to encourage the switch to public transport is often due to the alleged trouble of using other transportation modes compared to the convenience of private cars. “If cities are to effectively reduce congestion and pollution, regulation of access to cities must change dramatically. Until now, the constraints on the use of cars have largely remained low”, explain the authors. “An approach promising individual time savings will not benefit the collective interest. To be efficient, policies should focus primarily on the rarest resource for the community: space. Transport authorities must intervene on the uses of roads, sidewalks and pedestrian zones. It is up to them to define the balance between the different uses of roads”. In addition, public authorities should significantly develop public transport systems that constitute a genuine, practical, fast, reliable, and affordable alternative. The lack of public transport in areas of disperse and low demand due to financial reasons also remains a critical issue to be addressed. The CERRE report also finds that new mobility services (such as shared cars or free-floating e-scooters) provide unprecedented opportunities to reduce the disutility users would face from simply switching from the private car to public or active transport. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) enables users to change their routines, discover the variety of mobility services available and to combine former and new mobility services. Shared mobility providers may complement public transport, especially by supplying first and last mile solutions, and by serving areas where public transport is not financially viable. However, unless ridesharing replaces solo trips by car at a large scale, the impacts on congestion, pollution and CO2 emissions are likely to be neutral at best. Urban mobility public authorities cannot neglect the opportunities brought by new mobility services. Public authorities have to be more ambitious. They have to enlarge their spectrum of mobility services that will, in a financially sustainable way, ease user life and foster alternatives to solo car use. But to effectively deal with new mobility services authorities must develop new skills in the data and platforms areas. Platforms, information services and ticketing are crucial to increase the number of users of urban mobility services. Although digitalisation cannot be considered a magic wand, it plays a critical role in achieving this transition to new mobility services. For MaaS to develop, Mobility data must be gathered under the umbrella of Metropolitan Transport Authorities, who are the only trusted party able to do so. “Policies for the use of roads should discourage the use of individual cars and incentivise ride sharing. As long as individual cars can move freely and on the same roads and use services in the same conditions as shared vehicles, it is unlikely that MaaS and shared mobility will be successful. In addition, public authorities need to modernise and grasps the opportunities that digitisation and data offer for the transition to a truly sustainable mobility”, conclude the authors.

The emergence of sharing mobility is having a profound impact on urban landscapes. In fact, it is deeply affecting the traditional organization of local services by calling into question how urban transportation is planned, and by redesigning city spaces. Further, by connecting people to shared assets, services or both, sharing mobility is poised to facilitate the more efficient use of underutilized resources, becoming a powerful tool for economic growth and social inclusion, while also contributing to sustainability. That being said, the economic, social and spatial impacts of sharing mobility have not been sufficiently investigated, and so far, the evidence is mixed. From a normative standpoint, while it is relevant to better understand the relations between sharing mobility, the city and the environment, it is also of crucial importance to define new policies and sound rules for sharing mobility in urban areas. Against this backdrop, this book adopts a multidisciplinary perspective to explore the role that sharing mobility can play in the creation of more just and sustainable cities.

In New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies, transportation expert Todd Litman examines 12 emerging transportation modes and services that are likely to significantly affect our lives: bike- and carsharing, micro-mobilities, ridehailing and micro-transit, public transit innovations, telework, autonomous and electric vehicles, air taxis, mobility prioritization, and logistics management. Public policies around New Mobilities can either help create heaven, a well-planned transportation system that uses new technologies intelligently, or hell, a poorly planned transportation system that is overwhelmed by conflicting and costly, unhealthy, and inequitable modes. His expert analysis will help planners, local policymakers, and concerned citizens to make informed choices about the New Mobility revolution.

With the recent advancements and implementations of technology within the global community, various regions of the world have begun to transform. The idea of smart transportation and mobility is a specific field that has been implemented among countless areas around the world that are focused on intelligent and efficient environments. Despite its strong influence and potential, sustainable mobility still faces multiple demographic and environmental challenges. New perspectives, improvements, and solutions are needed in order to successfully apply efficient and sustainable transportation within populated environments. Implications of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in Urban and Rural Environments: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on recent transportation improvements and the development of mobility systems in populated regions. While highlighting topics such as human-machine interaction, alternative vehicles, and sustainable development, this publication explores competitive solutions for transport efficiency as well as its impact on citizens’ quality of life. This book is ideally designed for researchers, environmentalists, civil engineers, architects, policymakers, strategists, academicians, and students seeking current research on mobility advancements in urban and rural areas across the globe.

This monograph presents a tactical planning approach for service network design in metropolitan areas. Designing the service network requires the suitable aggregation of demand data as well as the anticipation of operational relocation decisions. To this end, an integrated approach of data analysis and mathematical optimization is introduced. The book also includes a case study based on real-world data to demonstrate the benefit of the proposed service network design approach. The target audience comprises primarily research experts in the field of traffic engineering, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.