The Role of Transit, Shared Modes, and Public Policy in the New Mobility Landscape (2021) / Chapter Skim
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2 Shared Mobility and Public Transportation
2 Shared Mobility and Public Transportation
Pages 27-70
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From page 27... ...
the roles that shared modes could play "in the provision of transportation services as part of regional transportation systems, and specifically the relationship to ... existing public transit." The next section sketches out what is known about how shared mobility providers are affecting the social and environmental goals listed above.
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2017. Travel Behavior: Shared Mobility and Transportation Equity.
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Access to ridehailing also depends on user access to smartphones and bank accounts, which some low-income individuals lack. ADA access issues and how they are addressed in ridehailing–public transit coordination efforts are described in the third section of this chapter and in Chapter 5.
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2019. Arlington County Shared Mobility Pilot Evaluation Report.
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By 2018, total trips on Uber and Lyft in the United States had tripled that of taxis and approached that of local bus transit trips.21 One study estimates that UberX users, collectively, would have been willing to pay as much as $6.8 billion more for their trips than the fares paid in 2015,22 an amount that has presumably grown since then. This estimate of what economists refer to as consumer surplus, however, does not account for costs to the public, such as safety and non-market costs resulting from increased congestion and emissions, as described in the following subsections.
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Even so, a recent study estimates that New York City's bikesharing program results in net public health improvement after accounting for the health benefits of active travel that cycling offers, bicycle-involved crashes, and cyclist exposure to vehicle emissions.26 The rapidly growing use of ebikes would presumably compound the crash injury risks to cyclists due to the higher speeds e-bikes are capable of sustaining,27 but results from studies conducted in Israel28 and the Netherlands,29 where e-bike use is more widespread than in the United States, are inconsistent in this regard.30 24 See the subsection on micromobility impacts on transit in the next main section.
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Increased ridehail trips for late night weekend trips may be associated with declines in alcohol-involved crashes, as early studies suggested, but a more thorough study found no relationship between the beginning of Uber service in a metropolitan area and downward trends in traffic fatalities.35 A study using a comparison group of cities without Uber and Lyft service, however, finds a 2 to 4 percent increase in overall traffic fatalities after Uber and Lyft begin providing service, with an estimated 31 Aizpuru, M., et al.
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2016. Shared Mobility: Current Practices and Guiding Principles.
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Round-trip carshare membership in North America is associated with increased use of transit, walking, and cycling, reduced use of automobiles, and lowered greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.42 Convenience surveys of early North American bikeshare programs indicate that one-quarter to half of respondents report driving less as a result of bikesharing.43 Survey respondents participating in city pilot projects to date allowing dockless bikesharing consistently report reductions in trips by motor vehicles.44 A survey of e-scooter users in 18 metro politan areas indicates that 41 percent of the most recent e-scooter trips would have been made by automobile if the e-scooter option had not been available.45 An exception to micromobility sustainability benefits could be for the first generation of e-scooters, which increased life-cycle GHG emissions compared to all modes they replaced but automobiles given the short life cycles of first-generation e-scooters and the rebalancing practices of the time.46,47 E-scooter vendors subsequently began upgrading their products for both productivity and environmental reasons.48 The impact of ridehailing on auto ownership and use remains uncertain, but, as described in detail in the next main section of this chapter, ridehailing may reduce use of transit, cycling, and walking and has been estimated to increase total vehicle miles traveled (VMT)
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IMPACTS ON TRANSIT This section focuses on the known impacts of shared mobility services on public transit ridership in North America by synthesizing the results 52 Anair, D., J Martin, M
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Ridehailing has been growing remarkably fast, while also evolving as it does so, which makes any assessment a snapshot in time of a changing phenomenon. Moreover, despite the remarkable creativity by researchers in studying ridehailing and its impacts in a rapidly expanding body of literature, the general lack of detailed data on ridehail trips hampers the ability to estimate ridehail impacts on transit ridership while controlling for other influences.
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Henao, 201757 Denver Intercept survey n=311 ridehail riders 22% of ridehail users would have used transit; 4.5% would have used taxis. 12% of users indicate that most ridehail trips would not have occurred without the availability of this mode.
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Hall et al., 201862 Metropolitan statistical areas in the United States Statistical analysis (differences in differences regression) For the average transit agency, entry of Uber increases transit ridership, with larger effects in large cities and for small transit agencies.
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Li et al., 202065 City of Toronto Models based on 2016– 2018 ridehail trips, transit supply, and ridership Ridehail trips appear to complement rail transit and substitute for bus and streetcar trips in the urban core. Ridehail complements rail mostly in offpeak periods and substitutes for surface transit mostly in peak periods.
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shifts from transit, walking, biking. No discernable or consistent shift in auto ownership in eight large cities or close-in neighborhoods between 2006 and 2017 as ridehail trips grew markedly.
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Graehler et al., 201972 22 major U.S. cities Statistical analysis of monthly transit ridership data over 2002–2018; ridehail and shared bike operations; population; other factors After ridehail companies enter a market, heavy rail ridership decreases by 1.29% per year, and bus ridership decreases by 1.70% per year.
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Substituting for and Complementing Transit Trips Several surveys indicate that ridehail users are substituting ridehail trips for transit trips. For example, ridehail users responding to intercept studies in San Francisco and Denver indicate that 22 to 33 percent of their most recent ridehail trips would have been made by transit if ridehailing had not been available.74,75,76 (About 5 percent of ridehail trips in San Francisco, however, also began or ended at transit stations, implying that they could be first/last mile connections.)
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A modeling analysis for Toronto finds that ridehail trips substitute for bus trips while complementing rail trips in the urban core.83 Analysis of ridership trends in multiple metropolitan areas following Uber's entry compared with those without Uber service provides mixed results: increases in large cities and for small transit agencies but indicators of declines for large transit agencies up to 2015,84 whereas a separate study using a similar method found decreases in bus ridership, increases in commuter rail ridership, and no significant effect on light-rail or subway ridership.85 As a further contrast, a statistical analysis of transit ridership trends over 8 years from 22 large U.S. urban areas estimates a statistically significant 10 percent decrease in heavy rail ridership and a 13 percent decrease in bus ridership following the introduction of ridehailing service.86 A shortcoming of studies aggregating and comparing cities is their inability to account for differences in the built environment, extent of transit services, and presence or absence of public policies to influence complementary service between ridehailing and transit.87 These studies diverge on the complementarity versus substitutability of ridehailing for transit, but they are certainly suggestive.
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A detailed analysis of ridehailing trips in Denver estimates, conservatively, that deadheading increases VMT of individual ridehail trips by at least 40 percent,89 which can be important in cities such as San Francisco, where ridehail trips account for at least 15 percent of daily intra-city trips.90 In addition, ridehailing trips apparently divert some share of trips from transit, carpooling, and walking, which adds more automobile trips to the network.91,92,93,94 Finally, the mere availability of ridehailing induces trips that would not otherwise have happened, thereby also contributing to increased VMT; various surveys report that 8 to 12 percent of respondents would not have made their most recent trip had ridehailing not been available.95,96,97 These induced trips obviously add utility to the people who make them but can also impose social costs when they increase congestion and emissions. To the extent that auto users are willing to pool or split rides, ridehailing does not have to increase VMT as much as do solo passenger ridehailing trips.
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Two studies that account for these effects by modeling the impact of ridehailing on traffic speeds (in San Francisco and Manhattan) find significant reductions in speeds and significant increases in delay due to sharp growth in ridehailing trips.102,103 A similar modeling exercise in Toronto, however, estimated only marginal impacts of ridehailing trip growth on peak-period downtown traffic speeds.104 These divergent results suggest that the impact of ridehailing on urban traffic speed and delay depends on the share and magnitude of ridehail trips in the peak period and other conditions.
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found that from 2010 to 2015, riders using bikesharing stations in the city's central core substituted bikeshare for rail transit trips while riders using bikesharing stations on the transit system's periphery complemented rail transit service.113 (The rapid growth in bikeshare use occurred during the same period that Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority [WMATA] rail transit ridership was declining.
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, with substitution from transit more characteristic of Chinese studies and substitution for autos more characteristic of studies from Europe, Australia, and the United States.118 Carsharing and Microtransit The degree to which carsharing complements or substitutes for transit trips has received little empirical study. A review of the international literature reports mixed results from case studies of Ulm (Germany)
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An important set of issues for transit agency coordination with shared mobility providers involves contracting, data reporting, and other requirements established in federal and state law. Transit agencies, and private providers with which they contract, must meet federal and state legal equity obligations that come with providing transportation services to the general public.
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.126 Of the 37 agencies that responded to the survey in early to mid-2018, 14 agencies were engaged in active pilots; 5 were offering regular, continued service beyond the pilot stage; 14 were exploring or procuring partnerships; and 4 had concluded pilot tests.127 This survey focused on the nature of transit agency efforts to coordinate with ridehailing companies and how issues such as ADA and Title VI compliance, data sharing, labor union concerns, and agency liability were being addressed. It did not systematically gather metrics about trips, costs, or other output measures.
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Although not identified in this survey, there is also an issue about partnering with private companies that have not yet proven profitable or financially sustainable and which may raise fares or simply end programs at any time.131 Few of the early pilot partnerships succeeded in receiving more data from Uber or Lyft than summary statistics on ridership and costs. Transit agencies wanted to receive such information to understand whether the pilot projects were meeting agency goals, for insight into users of the services and the purposes of the use, and to report subsidized ridehail trips to FTA's NTD.132 Other benefits of receiving disaggregated information would be to understand impacts of ridehail trips on traffic congestion and on fixed-route ridership.
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, was one of the first transit agencies to develop partnerships with ridehailing companies, initially with Uber and, later, with Lyft as well.134 PSTA has had three different partnership initiatives, which have provided different kinds of service and raised different kinds of issues (see Box 2-1 for details) .135 The first, described in this section, was designed to replace regular fixed-route transit service in lightly populated areas with little patronage with alternatives that were less expensive to provide.
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According to the transit agency's MOD grant application, PSTA currently spends $22.50 per ride on its current DART service, which utilizes nearly 10% of the transit agency's operating budget. PSTA seeks to achieve these goals through centralized dispatch technology that matches riders with TNCs, taxis, or wheelchair vans depending on the rider's needs, estimated arrival time, and cost."
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Both initiatives included paratransit and WAV providers to meet ADA and Title VI obligations. Complementing ADA Paratransit Services with a Ridehailing Option The third PSTA initiative, P4-MOD, was developed as an FTA MOD Sandbox project, the evaluation of which is not yet available.
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Arlington, Texas, is one such city. Located between Dallas and Fort Worth, Arlington voters rejected dedication of local sales tax funds to existing transit agencies operating within the region for the third time in 2017, which caused the city to end operation of its single bus route.143 Instead, it began 140 Curtis et al.
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study is reviewing pilot efforts by transit agencies to coordinate with cities and micromobility providers to facilitate first/last mile connections to transit.147 According to the interim report of this TCRP project and other reports, first/last mile connection efforts have focused on providing docking stations and parking near transit stops and stations,148 regulating sidewalk use and parking, providing bike lanes, and mandating data-sharing requirements that facilitate planning and enforcement. For the most part, these efforts are led by local governments rather than transit agencies, since local 144 Mauch, R
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The Dayton transit agency, which already operated the city's bikeshare system, has also partnered with an e-scooter company to provide rebalancing and recharging. As of 2017, joint marketing between docked bikeshare and transit agencies and fare integration between docked service providers and transit was limited.150 There are newer exceptions.
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A separate survey of shared mode pilot projects around the country found that, between 2015 and 2018, transit agencies tended to shift away from partnering with ridehailing companies to partnering with microtransit providers for first/last mile or low-density services in order to gain access to more data than ridehailing companies were willing to provide; to substitute vans for automobiles to increase occupancy and reduce emissions per trip; and to ensure that the services did not compete with fixed-route transit.155 153 This paragraph draws heavily on Volinksi, J
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Evidence from recent microtransit pilot projects in Arlington, Texas; West Sacramento, California; and Seattle, Washington, suggests that contracted microtransit service to the general public is popular with riders, reduces CO2 emissions, and costs less per passenger trip than traditional paratransit service but more than fixed-route service.157 These passenger satisfaction and per-trip cost results are consistent with the experience of transit agencies that responded to the TCRP Synthesis survey, some of whom have long experience with DRT service. SHARED MOBILITY–TRANSIT SERVICES ACROSS REGIONS This section outlines different roles shared modes could play in urban, suburban, and rural areas alone or in combination with public transportation.
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First/Last Mile Services This strategy applies wherever fixed-route transit is offered by expanding the geography accessible to fixed-route transit via shared modes. Among 48 pilot collaborations between transit agencies and ridehail and microtransit providers between 2015 and 2019, about 38 percent are first/last mile services.159 Heavily Traveled Routes All shared modes could contribute to expanding the geographic areas accessible to fixed-route transit for origin-to-destination transit trips.
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As shown in Table 2-2, personal auto trips to transit stations number in the hundreds of millions annually, though estimates are lacking of how many of these trips could be substituted by shared modes. It could be substantial, however, as 45 percent of city trips are 3 miles or less, a distance at which micromobility could substitute for some personal auto trips.161 A second way that shared modes and transit could reduce congestion and vehicle emissions would be by replacing trips made solely from origin to destination by automobile, as described next.
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2019. Estimating Activity and Health Impacts of First and Last Mile Transit Access Programs for Work and Shopping Trips Using Shared Mobility Services in the Metropolitan Area.
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Such pilots represent about 23 percent of transit agency partnerships with shared mobility providers and occur in cities of all sizes as well as in townships and exurban counties.167 Examples cited previously occur in urbanized counties (Pinellas County, Florida) and a metropolitan area of wide expanse across urban, suburban, and exurban areas (Boston's MBTA)
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and mostly within urbanized areas.171 The successful pilot test described previously in Pinellas County, Florida, occurred in a jurisdiction with a population density of about 1,600 people per square mile, which would seem typical of many suburbs and urbanized portions of close-in counties of metropolitan areas. Low-Density Services Transit agencies are piloting use of microtransit and pooled ridehailing to serve the general population in areas that are lightly populated and expensive to serve by fixed-route transit; these trips can be point to point (the service is not designed to provide first/last mile services but some riders may use it for this purpose)
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a growing number of individuals are benefiting from the opportunities shared modes provide and (2) the rapid growth in ridehail trips in congested major urban centers may slow traffic speeds in these settings and increase emissions.
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See the review of strategies transit agencies and local governments can use to enhance bus system speeds and service reliability in Chapter 5. 2.2.2 Impacts of Micromobility As with ridehailing, micromobility appears to have mixed effects by complementing transit in some settings, such as in first/last mile connections to rail transit, and substituting for it in others, particularly in urban cores where shared bikes or scooters can provide faster, more direct trips than transit for some trips.
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The pilot projects described in the chapter illustrate potential benefits from coordination between shared mobility providers and transit agencies. They indicate that new technologies and partnerships can both reduce the cost and improve the quality of paratransit services, thereby enhancing efficiency, and the mobility of eligible riders, thereby enhancing equity.
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Service to low-density areas will reach fewer passengers per agency dollar expended, and, if agency budgets remain fixed, paying for more micro transit subsidies to serve fewer passengers means less funding for fixed-route services.181 Whether the higher cost per passenger is acceptable depends on the goals that transit agencies are trying to serve and funds they have available.182 Experience and technology may help transit agencies improve the productivity and cost of this service and serve geographic equity goals, but it involves tradeoffs in resource allocation to fixed-route services and overall productivity. 2.4 Shared Mobility–Transit Services Across Regions Shared mode–transit trips and subsidized shared mode services could apply at all spatial scales and become part of regional transportation systems.
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. Transit agencies in partnerships with shared mobility providers need such data to evaluate the effectiveness of their partnerships.
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The chapters that follow describe how the innovations occurring in passenger transportation can improve consumer information about travel options that serve both the individual and society and how to use public policies to expand consumer modal choices.
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