Sustainable Transportation At The University Of Central Florida: Evaluation Of Ucf Rideshare Program, Zimride

As the second-largest university in the United States, UCF has experienced the largest enrollment in its history. A more densely populated campus has in turn caused increased traffic congestion. Despite increased parking permit fees and newly constructed parking garages, traveling and parking on campus is unpredictable. In effort to reduce congestion on campus, a rideshare program was implemented in Summer 2010. Several universities across the nation have successfully used carpooling as a viable alternative mode to manage traffic and parking demand. This thesis evaluates the UCF rideshare program, Zimride, using stated- and revealed-preference surveys. Preliminary results indicate most students prefer to commute to campus using their own car and without incentives there is no reason to change mode choice, regardless of associated costs—e.g. decal cost, parking time and frustration. Despite 70% of respondents considering themselves environmentally friendly and over 80% are aware of savings in money and productive by using alternative modes, 70% still use their car to commute to campus. Using Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the observed variables were organized into three (3) latent variables based on the correlation among them. The SEM results of the revealed-preference survey indicate current travel behavior significantly influences attitudes towards carpooling and demographics have a significant effect on current travel behavior. It was also found that demographics influences attitudes towards carpooling at a non statistically significant level

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

Chapter 13 - Sharing strategies: carsharing, shared micromobility (bikesharing and scooter sharing), transportation network companies, microtransit, and other innovative mobility modes

Shared mobility—the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other mode—is an innovative transportation strategy that enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an “as-needed” basis. It includes various forms of carsharing, bikesharing, scooter sharing, ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling), transportation network companies (TNCs), and microtransit. Included in this ecosystem are smartphone “apps” that aggregate and optimize these mobility options, as well as “courier network services” that provide last mile package and food delivery. This chapter describes different models that have emerged in shared mobility and reviews research that has quantified the environmental, social, and transportation-related impacts of these services

Boosting Ride Sharing With Alternative Destinations

People living in highly populated cities increasingly experience decreased quality of life due to pollution and traffic congestion. With the objective of reducing the number of circulating vehicles, we investigate a novel approach to boost ride-sharing opportunities based on the knowledge of the human activities behind individual mobility demands. We observe that in many cases the activity motivating the use of a private car (e.g., going to a shopping mall) can be performed in many different places. Therefore, when there is the possibility of sharing a ride, people having a pro-environment behavior or interested in saving money can accept to fulfill their needs at an alternative destination. We thus propose activity-based ride matching (ABRM), an algorithm aimed at matching ride requests with ride offers, possibly reaching alternative destinations where the intended activity can be performed. By analyzing two large mobility datasets extracted from a popular social network, we show that our approach could largely impact urban mobility by resulting in an increase up to 54.69% of ride-sharing opportunities with respect to a traditional destination-oriented approach. Due to the high number of ride possibilities found by ABRM, we introduce and assess a subsequent ranking step to provide the user with the top-k most relevant rides only. We discuss how ABRM parameters affect the fraction of car rides that can be saved and how the ranking function can be tuned to enforce pro-environment behaviors. This is the a pre-print version. Full version is available at the IEEE Transactions in Intelligent Transportations Systems https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/837006

Exploration of the Current State and Directions of Dynamic Ridesharing

Dynamic ridesharing (DRS) is an emerging transportation service based on the traditional concept of shared rides. DRS makes use of web-based real-time technologies to match drivers with riders. Enabling technologies include software platforms that operate on mobile communication devices and contain location-aware capabilities including Global Positioning Systems (Agatz, Erera, Savelsberg, & Wang, 2012). The platforms are designed to provide ride-matching services via smartphone applications differing from early systems that used non-real time services such as internet forums, or telecommunications, where responses were not immediate. The study of DRS is important when considering its role as an emerging transportation demand management strategy. DRS reduces travel demand on singleoccupancy vehicles (SOVs) by filling vehicle seats that are typically left vacant. The most recent statistics of vehicle occupancy rates were measured in 2009 by the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation. According to the NHTS, the 2009 occupancy rate for all purposes was a meager 1.67 persons per vehicle (Federal Highway Administration, 2015). Vehicle occupancy rates examined against the total of all registered highway vehicles in the U.S. as of 2012, calculated at 253,639,386 (Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2015), reveals the magnitude of the impact of SOVs. Left unattended, the ramifications for environmental outcomes is substantial. Among the major energy consuming sectors, transportation\u27s share is largest in terms of total CO2 emissions at 32.9% (Davis, Diegel, & Boundy, 2014, p. 11-15). DRS offers promise to fill empty vehicle seats. Evidence indicates that specific demographic subgroups are inclined to use DRS services. For example, data suggest that the subgroup of 18 to 34-year-olds, the so-called millennials , have negative attitudes towards private car ownership unlike previous age groups (Nelson, 2013). Data collected for this study revealed that the millennial subgroup represents half of all DRS users. Millennials also revealed they tended to use DRS more than other subgroups to replace a private vehicle. Further research is needed to determine if the trend towards DRS by 18 to 34-year-olds represents current economic factors or a fundamental cultural shift away from the SOV transportation model

Multinomial Logit Utility Model for Tanta City Transportation System considering Ridesharing Mode

Recently, ridesharing has been noticed as an effective and sustainable mode of transport. In which, each passenger carries out a journey that benefits travelers and society greatly, such as reducing travel costs, reducing journey times, relieving road traffic congestions, preserving fuel and reducing air pollution. While the importance and efficiency of ridesharing, ridesharing among travelers has not been commonly utilized. This paper introduces an upgraded disaggregated utility model for a mode choice step in the four-step traffic demand model for transport of passengers in Tanta city - Gharbiya governorate. For the first time, the analysis in this paper includes ridesharing mode in addition to other three common modes; private vehicle, bus, and taxi . The aim of this research is to involve the ridesharing mode and new parameters in the mode choice analysis of the case study. This is done by including additional parameters such as travel cost and comfortable in addition to travel time. Based on surveys, the developed Multinomial logit utility models have been assessed using the McFadden pseudo R2 values. The values demonstrated high compatibility of results with real data as pseudo R2 values ranges between 0.2 and 0.4. In addition, all utility models developed for modes are found to have P-values less than 0.05 indicating the significance of the considered utility characteristics

How a rapid modal convergence into a universal automated taxi service could be the future for local passenger transport

The world is changing rapidly. Yet a common assumption is that cars, buses and taxis will remain the dominant local passenger transport modes in the coming decades. This concept paper draws on literature sources and on discussions with industry stakeholders to look anew at the local passenger transport sector in the light of broader societal trends to suggest an alternative future, and to offer insights to practitioners and policy makers. The paper finds that the traditional modes of car, bus and taxi are slowly beginning to lose market share to intermediate modes such as shared taxis, lift sharing schemes, DRT services and car clubs whilst numerous technological and market trends are combining to accelerate this process of ‘modal convergence’. Taken together, these trends could revolutionise how we move about, with one possible outcome being the emergence of a single dominant passenger mode of an automated universal taxi system or dial-a-pod

Informal and shared mobility: A bibliometric analysis and researcher network mapping

This study was commissioned by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations to inform the content of the next phase of its Future Urban Transport programme. The aim of the study was to define the subject field (provisionally described by VREF as ‘informal public transport’ and ‘shared mobility’), analyse its bibliometric attributes. The study method involved an analysis of the nomenclature and focus of seminal or consolidating in-field literature to delineate the scope of the study, a systematic search of multiple platforms for in-field English language publications between 2010 and the present, the creation and augmentation of a database for bibliometric analysis, and a survey of leading researchers across eight global regions. The subject field was divided into four main categories of passenger services (flexible transport, informal transport, shared mobility and for-hire transport), which sit between purely private transport and scheduled mass public transport, and can be found in various guises across the Global North and Global South. The timeline of innovation in the field reveals complex and multi-directional global diffusion of service innovations, triggered by changed operating environments and technology disruption. It was found that research in this field is growing fast (doubling every four years). The recent literature is dominated by authors affiliated to universities in Europe, Eastern Asia and Northern America at a regional scale, and to universities in China and the United States at a country scale. Shared mobility (and bike-sharing, car-sharing and ride hailing in particular) has received most attention (62%), followed by for-hire transport (17%), informal transport (11%), and flexible transport (10%). Most publications concerning shared mobility and for-hire transport were produced by lead authors in China (19,3% and 44,1%), followed by the United States (15,0% and 9,9%). Most publications concerning informal transport were produced in South Africa (18,2%) followed by India (9,8%), and concerning flexible transport were produced in the United States (13,1%) followed by Australia (9,6%). There has been extensive international research collaboration, with collaboration between research institutions in China and the United States found to be particularly strong, as was collaboration between China and other East Asian countries. Somewhat paradoxically, while the quantity of collaborations with universities in Africa, Latin America, and Western Asia was relatively small, authors from many countries within these regions are most likely to publish through international collaboration. Citation networks between institutions followed a similar pattern to collaboration networks. Geographical gaps in the literature were found, with heatmaps revealing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, that received no dedicated research attention. While difficult to quantify, there were also indications of thematic gaps in the literature, or at least disparity between the prevalence of a service type and the number of publications about it. Most notably, compared to their global prevalence, bike-sharing, car-sharing and carpooling were well researched, compared to informal for-hire transport and informal public transport, which received significantly less attention. Given the multi-directional innovation diffusion in the subject field, and the disparity of research capacity and output across regions, it is a field of inquiry that presents rich possibilities for global research collaboration in the next phase of the FUT programme. The survey of leading researchers suggested that: integrating with mass public transport services; serving the needs of vulnerable passengers; regulating service providers; introducing electric vehicles into shared mobility and informal transport fleets; and digitalising aspects of informal transport operations; are priority future research needs