Transportation planning options for elderly mobility

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2011.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 46-49).The population of the United States is aging, yet the current transportation system is not designed to accommodate the elderly. Reduced mobility has a profound impact on elderly well-being, and the transportation needs of older people will only increase as the baby boomer generation ages in the suburbs. Where transportation options do exist, few meet the standards of the private car that the baby boomers have come to expect. I explore the mobility attitudes and habits of the baby boomers and the responses of communities and regions to an already apparent mobility gap. I then evaluate a sample of near-term policy options for decision makers, using case studies of public transportation, SilverRideTM, ITNAmerica®, and villages. I argue that the options vary along the criteria of availability, acceptability, and affordability, and within a taxonomy of fiscal and social capacity. Diverse contexts mean that no one option is sufficient, and communities will ultimately decide which options to pursue based on their unique needs and resources. In the future, policy options will likely evolve to better address public funding constraints and build on informal forms of transportation. Both fiscal and social capacity are necessary for transportation policy options to function optimally over time, and communities can leverage existing social capacity to help enhance elderly well-being and address the unpreparedness of regions and individuals.by Holly Chase.M.C.P

Ride-hailing applications in Vancouver, Canada: Representation, local empowerment and resistance

Technological applications have caused a revolution in the way individual transportation rides are offered and taken in cities all over the world. The adoption and regulation of ride-hailing has been the subject of heated discussion involving elected officials, bureaucrats, industry proponents, the traditional taxicab industry, and civil society. To implement ride-hailing, proponents and platform operators confront an intricate web of decision-making processes and institutional politics. In this way, existing normative processes shape the emergent regulation of such transportation network companies. This article analyzes the case of Vancouver, Canada, one of the largest cities in North America where ride-hailing companies belatedly secured authorization to operate from the provincial government in 2019. Focusing on the policy debate since 2012, the research identifies the interactions and processes of interest representation among various actors regarding this new transportation technology. The analysis shows how a variety of political, economic and regulatory strategies contributed to the delayed adoption.Les applications technologiques ont révolutionné la manière dont les trajets de transports individuels sont proposés et empruntés dans les villes du monde entier. L’adoption et la réglementation du covoiturage a fait l’objet de discussions animées impliquant des élues, des bureaucrates, des promoteurs de l’industrie, l’industrie traditionnelle des taxis et la société civile. Pour mettre en oeuvre le covoiturage, les promoteurs et les opérateurs de plateformes sont confrontés à un réseau complexe de processus décisionnels et de politiques institutionnelles. Cela faisant, les processus normatifs existants façonnent la réglementation émergente de ces sociétés de réseau de transport. Cet article analyse le cas de Vancouver, au Canada, l’une des plus grandes villes d’Amérique du Nord où les entreprises de covoiturage ont tardivement obtenu l’autorisation d’opérer du gouvernement provincial en 2019. En se concentrant sur le débat politique depuis 2012, la recherche identifie les interactions et les processus de représentation des intérêts entre les différents acteurs concernant cette nouvelle technologie de transport. L’analyse montre comment diverses stratégies politiques, économiques et réglementaires ont contribué au retard de l’adoption

Two Narratives of Platform Capitalism

Mainstream economists tend to pride themselves on the discipline\u27s resem­blance to science. But growing concerns about the reproducibility of economic research are undermining that source of legitimacy. These concerns have fueled renewed interest in another aspect of economic thought: its narrative nature. When presenting or framing their work, neoliberal economists tend to tell sto­ries about supply and demand, unintended consequences, and transaction costs in order to justify certain policy positions. These stories often make sense, and warn policymakers against simplistic solutionism

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

TDOT 25-Year Long-Range Transportation Policy Plan, Mobility Policy Paper

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-dept-transportation-25-year-transportation-policy/1005/thumbnail.jp

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

Essays of Platform Work and Changing Workplaces

The platform economy provides employment opportunities for many workers, offering benefits such as low entry and exit costs, and flexibility. However, it also represents a contemporary manifestation of nonstandard work, characterized by insecurity and inadequate labor protections. As platforms expand and become more often a full-time job to many, the contradictions between their benefits and precariousness intensify. Research has clarified the causes and implications of platform work, especially in the context of high-income countries. However, platform work is a global phenomenon, and its impacts are bound to differ across nations. Furthermore, as ridesharing became the poster child of the platform economy, it has received disproportional attention relative to other segments. Still, it is known that rules, outcomes, and experiences vary significantly across platforms. This dissertation comprises an overview introduction and three independent essays focusing on the platform economy. The first and second essays focus on the impacts of ridesharing on occupational demographics and job quality, taking advantage of the staggered entry of Uber in Brazil as a natural experiment. The first uncover general trends and compares drivers with workers in other arrangements, including formal and informal, while the second zooms in on women in distinct family configurations to investigate whether ridesharing – in providing a flexible job opportunity – has affected women differently. Findings reveal a surge in the number of people driving as their primary job with a marked decline in earnings and job security trends. Furthermore, the presence of children in the household and urban violence rates affect women’s decisions to become drivers differently than men. The third essay comprises an online experiment and a survey on a freelance platform to investigate United States-based worker preferences, contrasting individuals who rely on the platform as primary and supplemental income sources. Preliminary findings from a pilot study reveal that platform earnings play a significant role in covering essential family expenses, and there is a positive correlation between preference for flexibility and platform reliance. Workers prominently highlight flexibility and business-related benefits as the platform’s primary advantages, while identifying elements of precariousness and high fees as major drawbacks

Disruptive New Firms in the Sharing Economy: A Process View of Corporate Reputations

This thesis addresses the formation of corporate reputations for digital platform-based disruptive new firms (DNFs) in the sharing economy. I provide one of the first empirical studies to examine the process by which reputations unfold over time, taken from a socially constructed view. I offer a nuanced understanding into the formation of both market and character reputations. I conduct a longitudinal qualitative analysis of a typical case of DNFs in the sharing economy, Uber Technologies Inc. The findings highlight that DNFs develop rapid market reputations and may sustain it in light of misconduct and wrongdoing. The impact of enduring misconduct, places a negative pressure on DNFs’ character reputations, however limited. I evaluate stakeholder sensemaking in two marketplaces: the marketplace of goods and services and the marketplace of ideas (Mahon & Wartick, 2003). In the former, DNFs are subject to rapid market responses by primary stakeholders, investors, who by rewarding firms on meeting economic imperatives, incite the adoption of precarious practices. In the marketplace of ideas, misconduct and wrongdoing evoke more significant tensions between economic and social values. The nature of DNFs wrongdoing often resides in a grey zone, which drives contested understandings in the marketplace of ideas. Enduring and positive market signals of DNFs’ market reputations also interfere with stakeholder sensemaking. As a result, character reputations take time to form and place limited pressure on market reputations. I also highlight that the embeddedness of a CEO-founder and the firm is a critical mechanism by which DNFs may ward off damage to character reputations