by Innovative Mobility Research | Jun 22, 2020 |
Author: Dave Lee Date: June 17, 2020 Uber has signed a deal to manage public transport in Marin County, in the San Francisco Bay area, with its software. Residents in Marin, which has a population of 250,000, will be able to book rides on public minibuses through Uber’s app, which will match riders travelling in the same direction. Rides will cost $4 per mile, or $3 for those with disabilities or other mobility issues, with the fee going directly to Marin Transit. Uber will not collect a commission, instead charging the authority a flat monthly rate for the next two years, totaling no more than $80,000 over that period. While the contract is minor when set against Uber’s quarterly revenues of $3.5bn, it could lay the ground for Uber to sell its software as a service to public transport officials across the world. David Reich, Uber’s head of transit, said the company was in discussions with… Read the full article...
by Innovative Mobility Research | Apr 29, 2020 |
Image Source: Business Insider Susan Shaheen and Adam Cohen 4/26/20 Transportation Network Companies (TNCs, also known as ridehailing and ridesourcing) generate a significant percentage of their gross bookings from trips in large metropolitan areas, including trips to and from airports. For example, in 2019, Uber generated 23% of its ride gross bookings from five metropolitan areas — Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Because the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted operations in large metropolitan areas and demand for air travel, income for drivers and the financial performance of the for-hire ride sector are being adversely impacted. In mid-March, Uber announced that rides were down 60 to 70% in Seattle, an area impacted early by COVID-19. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) can be used as a conservative indicator to estimate the drop in TNC demand. For the above five cities, average VMT is 37 to 50% less than it normally was for the week ending April 13, 2020 based on INRIX data. However, TNC demand has probably dropped much more due to the drop in demand to access bars/restaurants and airports. COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented decline in commercial aviation traffic. United Airlines forecasts that it will fly fewer people during the entire month of May 2020 than they did on a single day in May 2019. Traffic on U.S. carriers was down 97% year-over-year during the 7 day period ending on April 12, 2020, according to Airlines for America (A4A). Read full article...
by Innovative Mobility Research | Aug 30, 2019 |
Susan Shaheen, PhD August 29, 2019 The market for personal mobility is changing rapidly due to shifting demographics and social trends, as well as technological advances such as: smartphones, information processing, and widespread data connectivity. Over the past year, we have been writing about Mobility on Demand(MOD): an innovative transportation concept evolving around connected travelers, where consumers can access mobility and goods delivery services on-demand by dispatching or using public transportation, shared mobility, courier services, urban air mobility, and other innovative and emerging technologies. MOD is based on the principle that transportation is a commodity where modes have economic values that are distinguishable in terms of cost, journey time, wait time, number of connections, convenience, and other attributes. In January 2019, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine co-hosted a workshop on: “Mobility on Demand — A Smart, Sustainable, and Equitable Future” at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, DC. The workshop facilitated a dialogue among over 150 participants from… Read the full article...
by Innovative Mobility Research | Jun 28, 2019 |
Bosch June 14, 2019 Does the future of our everyday mobility lie in self-driving shuttle busses? Professor Susan Shaheen has looked into how this new form of mobility can be organized equitably for everybody. She says the transition on our roads has already begun… Read the full article here: Shuttle Express into the...
by Innovative Mobility Research | Jun 20, 2019 |
Linda Vu June 19, 2019 In the past few years, devastating California wildfires have forced more than half a million people to evacuate their homes. In many cases, local government agencies did not have enough resources to transport and shelter all of the evacuees, especially vulnerable populations like the elderly and disabled. Meanwhile those who could afford it, secured hotel rooms or Airbnbs and evacuated with their cars. Now, researchers at UC Berkeley are suggesting that emergency management agencies and local relief organizations partner with companies in the sharing economy — including Airbnb, Lyft and Uber — and private citizens, to ensure equity in evacuations. They described their ideas in a first-of-its-kind policy brief published today. “Private sharing economy companies have already acted in California disasters and I’ve found that private citizens are moderately willing to share their own resources in disaster relief situations, especially transportation,” said Stephen Wong, a transportation engineering Ph.D. candidate in UC Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center. “Local organizations and emergency response agencies should… Read the full article here: How can companies like Airbnb, Lyft or Uber help in...
