Shared Mobility

Innovative Mobility Carsharing Outlook – Summer 2014

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2014

In October 2013, TSRC hosted the inaugural Shared-Use Mobility Summit in San Francisco, a two-day event facilitating a lively dialogue among mobility providers, policymakers, governmental agencies, non-profits, affiliated industries, technologists, academics, and other stakeholders on the current state of the practice, opportunities, and obstacles to market expansion in the fields of carsharing, public bikesharing, ridesharing, ondemand ride services, employer shuttles, and related sharing economy affiliates. Day One featured sessions on industry trends, success stories, the sharing...

Peer-to-Peer Carsharing: Exploring Public Perception and Market Characteristics in the San Francisco Bay Area, California

Ingrid Ballús Armet, Susan Shaheen, PhD, Kelly Clonts, and David Weinzimmer
2014

Peer-to-peer carsharing is an innovative approach to vehicle sharing in which vehicle owners temporarily rent their personal automobiles to others in their surrounding area. Peer-to-peer carsharing belongs to the larger sharing economy, an economic model premised on the notion of collaborative consumption as opposed to ownership. This study examined public perception of peer-to-peer carsharing and potential market characteristics through an intercept survey conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Three hundred respondents from 14 locations in San Francisco (n=150) and...

Carsharing: A Guide for Local Planners

Adam Cohen, Susan Shaheen, PhD, and Ryan McKenzie
2018

Transportation issues can create seemingly no-win conflicts for planners, whether it’s dealing with traffic demand management, wrangling over parking requirements, addressing quality of life issues that accompany traffic congestion, or trying to reduce vehicle emissions to forestall climate change. A new “product-as-service” approach to vehicle use, called carsharing, is springing up in major metropolitan markets, smaller districts, and university campuses all across the country. Where the conditions are right to support carsharing, these programs can give planners another flexible...

Good Practices for Local Governments and Private Companies Driving Change Together in Urban Mobility: Lessons Learned from One-Way Carsharing

Clara Terrien
Rémi Maniak
Bo Chen
Susan Shaheen, PhD
2016

Transforming urban mobility requires integrating public with private services into a single transportation system. Local governments and private companies face the challenge of how to coordinate themselves. An emblematic example is one-way carsharing (shared use of a fleet of vehicles that are typically free-floating throughout an urban area). Surprisingly, good practices for public and private players driving this change remain relatively undocumented. This paper proposes a systematic and balanced public-private approach to foster transportation innovation management. We review both...

Evolution of E-Mobility in Carsharing Business Models

Susan Shaheen, PhD
Nelson Chan
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,...

One-Way Carsharing's Evolution and Operator Perspectives from the Americas

Susan Shaheen, PhD
Nelson Chan
Helen Micheaux
2015

Classic roundtrip carsharing has been documented as a strategy to reduce car ownership and vehicle miles/kilometers traveled in urban areas. The expansion of carsharing and other forms of shared-use mobility have led to a growing interest in understanding the latest models. In recent years, one-way carsharing has gained momentum across the globe with 18 operators providing services in ten countries worldwide. One-way carsharing does not require its users to return the vehicle to the same location from which it was accessed (in contrast to roundtrip carsharing). Users typically pay by the...

One-Way Electric Vehicle Carsharing in San Diego: An Exploration of the Behavioral Impacts of Pricing Incentives on Operational Efficiency

Susan Shaheen, PhD, Elliot Martin, PhD, and Apaar Bansal
2018

This project is a two-year evaluation of pricing/incentives applied to the one-way, all electric carsharing system operated by car2go in San Diego, CA. This system is the only electric vehicle-based, one-way carsharing system with instant access (i.e., accessible without reservation) operating in the U.S. The goal of this project is to work with car2go and the San Diego region to develop and evaluate pricing/incentive structures for their members, which improve system operational efficiency (vehicle redistribution, state-of-charge management, use of vehicles placed at public transit...

Zero-emission vehicle exposure within U.S. carsharing fleets and impacts on sentiment toward electric-drive vehicles

Susan Shaheen, PhD, Elliot Martin, and Hannah Totte
2020

Reducing carbon emissions from the United States (U.S.) transportation sector has emerged as a priority action to combat climate changeCarsharing and zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) could be integral to creating a more sustainable transportation system. This paper presents the results of a study that evaluated the impacts of...

Is It Time for a Public Transit Renaissance?

Susan Shaheen, PhD and Adam Cohen
2018

Travel behavior is undergoing a period of significant change in the United States. In 2016, public transit ridership fell in almost all major U.S. metropolitan regions. While Americans are still heavily dependent on the personal automobile for mobility, technological and societal changes are transforming how mobility is accomplished. This paper reviews the convergence of five trends leading to fundamental changes in public transportation: (1) changing generational behavior toward suburbanization and automobility; (2) new attitudes toward information communications technology; (3)...

Planning for Shared Mobility

Adam Cohen
Susan Shaheen, PhD
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. Homesharing services, such as Airbnb, and peer-to-peer carsharing services, such as Getaround, have become part of a sociodemographic trend that has pushed the sharing economy from the fringe and more to the mainstream. The role of shared mobility in the broader landscape of urban mobility has become a frequent topic of discussion. Major shared transportation modes—...