Driving sustainable transportation: insights and strategies for shared-rides services

AbstractThe concept of sharing, enabled by emerging technologies, is playing an increasingly important role in contributing to a transformation toward more sustainable transportation. This study aimed to contribute to the growing body of literature on on-demand transportation services, with a particular emphasis on sharing or pooling a ride when using services such as transportation-network companies (TNCs) and microtransit. The study conducted a shared mobility survey of over 2,500 respondents from selected locales across Texas—ranging from large urban areas to small cities and rural areas. We analyzed the survey data in detail using extensive statistical analysis and inferential techniques and adopted an analysis approach toward implementation-oriented research to address the gap between theory and practice. Demographic, as well as geographic and built-environment, factors were found to play an important role in determining whether users will opt for a shared or pooled service and/or how they perceive these alternatives. The findings highlight the importance of improving safety and security, increasing awareness of the benefits of ride-sharing, and designing appropriate policy measures to promote sustainable mobility. We identified potential operational improvements, government policies, and employer programs to improve shared-ride services and encourage their use, such as reducing uncertainty in shared rides and minimizing inconvenience for passengers. A critical finding was the need to prioritize operational improvements in shared-ride trips over solely relying on financial incentives to induce behavior change. Enhanced public awareness and education were also determined to be crucial regardless of the nature of improvements, policies, or programs that are implemented

Exploring the Shared Use Pathway: A Review of the Design and Demand Estimation Approaches

ABSTRACTShared-use paths (SUPs) are rapidly growing in popularity worldwide as dedicated off-street paths that are shared by non-motorists. SUPS are becoming popular for pedestrians, inline skaters, roller skaters, skateboarders, wheelchair users, and electric bicycle riders, among others. SUPs can be built alongside or far from the roadway, with the former typically separated from vehicular traffic by a buffer. SUPs built off of roadways pose a lower risk of conflict with vehicular traffic. Given the crucial role of safety in SUP utilization, this study provides a targeted review of the existing literature and state of practice focusing on the implementation of the SUPs and design guidelines as well as factors, data, and approaches to estimate SUP user volume. The findings of this study will be helpful for transportation planners and policymakers with the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of SUPs. Ultimately, this review aims to encourage the development of safer and more accessible SUPs, enabling a broader range of non-motorists to benefit from these essential infrastructure investments

Gender Gaps in Improvements to Shared-Ride Services: Insights from a Shared Mobility Survey

This study analyzed data from a 2022 shared mobility survey to investigate the impact of gender on the potential improvements to on-demand transportation services, particularly shared-ride services such as ridesharing through transportation network companies (TNCs) and microtransit. Results revealed that male respondents were more inclined to opt for financial incentives such as pretax benefits, direct subsidies, and subsidizing certain trips. Employer-related programs such as parking cash-out programs and flexible working hours were also found to be more appealing to male respondents. In contrast, female respondents placed a greater emphasis on safety-related measures, indicating that safety concerns may be too significant for them to overlook, even when presented with financial incentives

Understanding Curb Management and Targeted Incentive Policies to Increase Pooling: Examining On-Demand Transportation Services with a Focus on Shared Rides

This study aimed to contribute to the growing body of literature on on-demand transportation services, with a particular emphasis on sharing or pooling a ride when using these services, such as transportation network companies (TNCs) and microtransit. In 2022, an online survey (shared mobility survey) was administered in both English and Spanish to persons 18 years old or older and in selected cities across Texas—ranging from large urban areas to small cities and rural areas. The survey was designed to collect a rich set of data from more than 2,500 participants and offered a reasonably representative sample of adults in Texas. The study conducted an extensive examination of the data collected to better understand on-demand mobility service use and user characteristics, including attitudes, perceptions, and concerns in general as well as while sharing trips. Barriers to using these services and potential improvements that would make sharing or pooling a trip more appealing were investigated for both current and future on-demand services. The study produced intriguing new findings that contributed to the literature, as well as findings that supported and occasionally deviated from the current literature

Data Mining to Improve Planning for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety [Supporting Dataset]

69A3551747115/Project 01-003National Transportation Library (NTL) Curation Note: As this dataset is preserved in a repository outside U.S. DOT control, as allowed by the U.S. DOT's Public Access Plan (https://doi.org/10.21949/1503647) Section 7.4.2 Data, the NTL staff has performed NO additional curation actions on this dataset. The current level of dataset documentation is the responsibility of the dataset creator. NTL staff last accessed this dataset at its repository URL on 2022-11-11. If, in the future, you have trouble accessing this dataset at the host repository, please email [email protected] describing your problem. NTL staff will do its best to assist you at that time.Between 2009 and 2016, the number of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities saw a marked trend upward. Taken together, the overall percentage of pedestrian and bicycle crashes now accounts for 18% of total roadway fatalities, up from 13% only a decade ago. Technological advancements in transportation have created unique opportunities to explore and investigate new sources of data for the purpose of improving safety planning. This study investigated data from multiple sources, including automated pedestrian and bicycle counters, video cameras, crash databases, and GPS/mobile applications, to inform bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements. Data mining techniques, a new sampling strategy, and automated video processing methods were adopted to demonstrate a holistic approach that can be applied to identify facilities with highest need of improvement. To estimate pedestrian and bicyclist counts at intersections, exposure models were developed incorporating explanatory variables from a broad spectrum of data sources. Intersection-related crashes and estimated exposure were used to quantify risk, enabling identification of high-risk signalized intersections for walking and bicycling. The modeling framework and data sources used in this study will be beneficial in conducting future analyses for other facility types, such as roadway segments, and also at more aggregate levels, such as traffic analysis zones. The data from multiple sources as mentioned above were compiled to create a data table in csv format. Total number of observations for this table is 1520 with a total of 502 variables (i.e., columns). The total size of the described zip file is 5.31 MB. Docx files are document files created in Microsoft Word. Text files can be view in notepad or any document reading software. The .csv, Comma Separated Value, file is a simple format that is designed for a database table and supported by many applications. The .csv file is often used for moving tabular data between two different computer programs, due to its open format. Any text editor or spreadsheet program will open .csv files. PDFs are used to display text and images and can be opened with any PDF reader or editor