A Holistic Guide to Shared Mobility

As shared mobility options continue to emerge and evolve, there is a lack of clarity regarding what services exist and how these services impact our urban environments. UC Berkeley’s TSRC (Transportation Sustainability Research Center) recently developed a holistic guide that compares and contrasts these services.

On a fundamental level, shared mobility is the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other low-speed mode that enables users to have short-term access to transportation modes, as needed. Pushed primarily by demographic shifts, societal attitudes toward ownership, and advances in mobile technology, these modes are growing rapidly and becoming more numerous. Some documented impacts of these modes are reviewed here.

Carsharing has been demonstrated to have a notable impact on automobile ownership and use among its users. TSRC studies have found that 25 percent of roundtrip carsharing members sold a vehicle due to carsharing and another 25 percent postponed purchasing a vehicle.

In contrast, free-floating bikesharing offers users the ability to check-out a bicycle and return it to any location within a predefined geographic region. Bikesharing provides a variety of pickup and drop-off locations.

Bikesharing, as one may assume, has been shown to encourage bicycling and reduce automobile use. 58 percent of bikesharing members increased their cycling, while 5.5 percent of members have sold or postponed a vehicle purchase as a result of bikesharing.

Interestingly, in denser cities like Washington, D.C., bikesharing members were more likely to use bikesharing in lieu of public transit, whereas, in less dense cities like Minneapolis, bikesharing users were more likely to increase their transit use by using it to connect with public transit stations.

Carpooling and vanpooling have the added benefit of reducing driver costs. A vanpool could cost between 100 and 300 US Dollars per person per month, although this varies considerably depending on gas prices, local market conditions, and government subsidies. Flexible carpoolers could save two-thirds the cost of commuting alone in a single-occupancy vehicle.

Ridesourcing warrants more study, given its rapid market penetration and evolution.

The advent of carsharing, bikesharing, ridesourcing or TNCs and other innovative mobility services is changing how urban travelers access transportation and move within cities. The use of these systems has led to several documented environmental, social and transportation-related impacts that are beneficial to our cities.

As these mobility options continue to grow in modal share, it is imperative to continue to study these modes and thereby, understand how cities can leverage these beneficial impacts to create more sustainable, safe and efficient transportation systems.

With so many shared mobility services available, how do you choose the right transportation mode? Share your opinions in the comment section.

Please note that this article expresses the opinions of the author and does not reflect the views of Move Forward.

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