An Analysis of issues against the adoption of Dynamic Carpooling

Using a private car is a transportation system very common in industrialized countries. However, it causes different problems such as overuse of oil, traffic jams causing earth pollution, health problems and an inefficient use of personal time. One possible solution to these problems is carpooling, i.e. sharing a trip on a private car of a driver with one or more passengers. Carpooling would reduce the number of cars on streets hence providing worldwide environmental, economical and social benefits. The matching of drivers and passengers can be facilitated by information and communication technologies. Typically, a driver inserts on a web-site the availability of empty seats on his/her car for a planned trip and potential passengers can search for trips and contact the drivers. This process is slow and can be appropriate for long trips planned days in advance. We call this static carpooling and we note it is not used frequently by people even if there are already many web-sites offering this service and in fact the only real open challenge is widespread adoption. Dynamic carpooling, on the other hand, takes advantage of the recent and increasing adoption of Internet-connected geo-aware mobile devices for enabling impromptu trip opportunities. Passengers request trips directly on the street and can find a suitable ride in just few minutes. Currently there are no dynamic carpooling systems widely used. Every attempt to create and organize such systems failed. This paper reviews the state of the art of dynamic carpooling. It identifies the most important issues against the adoption of dynamic carpooling systems and the proposed solutions for such issues. It proposes a first input on solving the problem of mass-adopting dynamic carpooling systems.Comment: 10 pages, whitepaper, extracted from B.Sc. thesis "Dycapo: On the creation of an open-source Server and a Protocol for Dynamic Carpooling" (Daniel Graziotin, 2010

Carpooling Liability?: Applying Tort Law Principles to the Joint Emergence of Self-Driving Automobiles and Transportation Network Companies

Self-driving automobiles have emerged as the future of vehicular travel, but this innovation is not developing in isolation. Simultaneously, the popularity of transportation network companies functioning as ride-hailing and ride-sharing services have altered traditional conceptions of personal transportation. Technology companies, conventional automakers, and start-up businesses each play significant roles in fundamentally transforming transportation methods. These transformations raise numerous liability questions. Specifically, the emergence of self-driving vehicles and transportation network companies create uncertainty for the application of tort law’s negligence standard. This Note addresses technological innovations in vehicular transportation and their accompanying legislative and regulatory developments. Then, this Note discusses the implications for vicarious liability for vehicle owners, duties of care for vehicle operators, and corresponding insurance regimes. This Note also considers theoretical justifications for tort concepts including enterprise liability. Accounting for the inevitable uncertainty in applying tort law to new invention, this Note proposes a strict and vicarious liability regime with corresponding no-fault automobile insurance

Dynamic carpooling in urban areas: design and experimentation with a multi-objective route matching algorithm

This paper focuses on dynamic carpooling services in urban areas to address the needs of mobility in real-time by proposing a two-fold contribution: a solution with novel features with respect to the current state-of-the-art, which is named CLACSOON and is available on the market; the analysis of the carpooling services performance in the urban area of the city of Cagliari through emulations. Two new features characterize the proposed solution: partial ridesharing, according to which the riders can walk to reach the driver along his/her route when driving to the destination; the possibility to share the ride when the driver has already started the ride by modeling the mobility to reach the driver destination. To analyze which features of the population bring better performance to changing the characteristics of the users, we also conducted emulations. When compared with current solutions, CLACSOON allows for achieving a decrease in the waiting time of around 55% and an increase in the driver and passenger success rates of around 4% and 10%, respectively. Additionally, the proposed features allowed for having an increase in the reduction of the CO2 emission by more than 10% with respect to the traditional carpooling service

Sharing economy and socio-economic transitions: an application of the multi-level perspective on a case study of carpooling in the USA (1970-2010)

The study deals with the emerging concept of sharing economy using the development of carpooling as example. It is based on the multi-level perspective framework, developed by Frank Geels, which is designed to explain and analyze processes of novel technology development. The present paper analyzes the new institution, carpooling, through the lens of this framework in order to understand its potential to be a landscape-changing innovation. This case study also attempts to illustrate how the multi-level perspective can be used to analyze not only technological innovations, but also novel ways of doing business, which can arguably be viewed as radical innovations on their own. The aim is thus to find out whether the emergence of carpooling follows the same patterns and shows the same features as emergence of conventional technological radical innovations

On the Feasibility of Social Network-based Pollution Sensing in ITSs

Intense vehicular traffic is recognized as a global societal problem, with a multifaceted influence on the quality of life of a person. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) can play an important role in combating such problem, decreasing pollution levels and, consequently, their negative effects. One of the goals of ITSs, in fact, is that of controlling traffic flows, measuring traffic states, providing vehicles with routes that globally pursue low pollution conditions. How such systems measure and enforce given traffic states has been at the center of multiple research efforts in the past few years. Although many different solutions have been proposed, very limited effort has been devoted to exploring the potential of social network analysis in such context. Social networks, in general, provide direct feedback from people and, as such, potentially very valuable information. A post that tells, for example, how a person feels about pollution at a given time in a given location, could be put to good use by an environment aware ITS aiming at minimizing contaminant emissions in residential areas. This work verifies the feasibility of using pollution related social network feeds into ITS operations. In particular, it concentrates on understanding how reliable such information is, producing an analysis that confronts over 1,500,000 posts and pollution data obtained from on-the- field sensors over a one-year span.Comment: 10 pages, 15 figures, Transaction Forma

GEARS: Group Employee Automatic Rideshare System

This project involves the system analysis and design of a ridesharing application aimed to reduce driving costs and offer a green alternative to the traditional workweek commute. GEARS (Group Employee Automatic Rideshare System) is an incentivized carpool solution for employees. In partnering with a company’s Human Resource Department, GEARS generates rideshare matching opportunities between coworkers. GEARS includes a reward system for employee participation, which leads to the broader benefits of reducing traffic, of decreasing fuel consumption, and of fostering stronger working relationships. This analysis includes an investigation of current carpooling options, a cost analysis of building the GEARS system, the system’s technical specifications as well as system design/diagramming techniques using UML (Unified Modeling Language). Construction and implementation of this project is to be completed in June 2022

First Zipcar, Now Uber: Legal and Policy Issues Facing the Expanding “Shared Mobility” Sector in U.S. Cities

Innovations and technological disruptions in the “sharing economy” are shifting the contours of urban travel in the United States. Carsharing organizations such as car2go and Zipcar have grown exponentially over the past decade, expanding their memberships from 52,347 in 2004 to 1,181,087 in 2015. Ridesourcing companies like Lyft and Uber, which were entirely absent from most U.S. cities as recently as 2010, are now global powerhouses, each reportedly worth billions of dollars. Private investors, after avoiding investments in urban transit services for more than half a century, are now offering venture capital for Bridj, Chariot, and other companies. This Article explores the dynamics of “shared mobility” and the policy issues facing the participants in that sector through a review of the evolution of four prominent types of shared mobility providers: (1) carsharing organizations; (2) transportation network companies such as Lyft and Uber; (3) privately operated “microtransit” operators; and (4) crowdsourced intercity bus lines. The analytical portion of the study in Part I describes and critiques how these sectors have evolved and summarizes the notable legal and policy issues they face. Part II develops a typology that categorizes their services and shows how each has disrupted the transportation sector. The last section also offers conclusions and suggestions for further study