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Transportation-disadvantaged populations often face significant challenges in meeting their basic travel needs. Microtransit, a technology-enabled transit mobility solution, has the potential to address these issues by providing on-demand, affordable, and flexible services with multi-passenger vehicles. The ways in which microtransit supports underserved populations and the factors influencing its adoption are not well-studied, however. This research examines SmaRT Ride, a microtransit pilot program in the Sacramento, California, area operated by Sacramento Regional Transit. The project evaluates a broad range of factors influencing microtransit adoption and travel behavior among underserved populations using original revealed choice survey data collected from February – May 2024 with online and intercept surveys. A descriptive analysis revealed that SmaRT Ride has improved transportation access for these communities, complements the transit system by connecting fixed-route transit, and offers a cost-effective alternative to other transportation modes. A binary logistic regression was employed to explore differences between microtransit users and non-users with microtransit awareness. The results indicate that homeownership, employment status, frequency of public transit service use, and attitude towards transit significantly affect microtransit use. Homeowners are more likely to use microtransit, while households without employed members are less likely. In contrast, part-time employees show a higher inclination to use microtransit. Regular public transit users are also more likely to incorporate microtransit into their routines, with a positive attitude toward public transit further increasing the likelihood of its use. The nuanced understanding of microtransit adoption presented here can inform targeted strategies to promote its use among transportation-disadvantaged groups. The results suggest that integrating microtransit with existing transit, outreach programs, discounted or free access, extended service hours, and supporting homeownership and affordable housing in transit-rich areas can encourage microtransit adoption by low-income and/or underserved individuals. View the NCST Project Webpage

This report presents the results of the Ecosystem of Shared Mobility Services in the San Joaquin Valley (Ecosystem) pilot project. The project is part of California Climate Investments (CCI), a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly in disadvantaged communities. As the grantee for this pilot project, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District implemented the pilot program by partnering and/or subcontracting with several local entities including, but are limited to: Sigala Inc.; UC Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies; Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC); Self-Help Enterprises, and MOVE. Funding for the Ecosystem pilot project provided by a grant from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) through the Car Sharing and Mobility Option Pilot Project solicitation. Research for the project was also supported by funding through the University of California via the Public Transportation Account and the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (Senate Bill 1) and the National Center for Sustainable Transportation, supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) through the University Transportation Centers program. View the NCST Project Webpage

In this article, a utility function framework is developed, serving to determine the demand for an upcoming demand responsive transportation system. A linear’public-good game’ (PGG) model is modified in a way that maximizing the consumer surplus is assumed to determine individual decision-making. This modification allows for considering the endowment effect in the function, which is expected to enable for a more precise distinction among customer segments. The purpose of this approach is to create a possibility for including descriptive behavioral economic findings in a normative modeling concept. It shall serve as a theoretical basis for coming empirical investigations.

People who live in rural areas in California face unique transportation challenges due to long travel distances, infrequent transit service, the cost of car ownership, and limited access to app-based rideshare services that are common in more populated urban centers. Over the past eight years, UC Davis has partnered with the eight San Joaquin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organizations to identify and support development of three innovative mobility pilot concepts for the region.Researchers at the University of California, Davis evaluated these three pilot programs using survey and service usage data collected from their launch dates in 2019 and 2020 through November 2021 to understand the participant characteristics and outcomes of each pilot. This policy brief summarizes the key findings from that research.View the NCST Project Webpage

Microtransit is an emerging, technology-enabled, on-demand transportation mode whereby small shuttles provide shared rides through flexible routing and scheduling in response to customers’ requests for rides. Given its potential to address the equity and accessibility needs of the public, public transportation agencies are experimenting with this service to fill gaps in traditional transportation in the US. However, why some people are interested in microtransit while others are not remains an open question. For people who have never used it, what factors could work as facilitators or barriers in their willingness to adopt microtransit? Who are the early adopters of microtransit? Guided by the theory of planned behavior, this study aims to fill the gap in knowledge by conducting a large-scale survey of microtransit adopters and users of other means of transportation in the Sacramento area of California in 2021. This study focuses on the microtransit service SmaRT Ride (SR), operated by the Sacramento Regional Transit District (SacRT). Focus groups and interviews were conducted before the largescale online survey to gather preliminary information, help develop survey questions, and improve understanding of research findings, given the novelty of microtransit. Discrete choice models, including binary logit and ordered logit models and latent class analysis, were employed to explore barriers to and facilitators of SR adoption, willingness to use it, and underlying subgroups of early adopters. Important findings include that people who like fixed-route transit are less likely to adopt microtransit. Social support plays an important role in explaining the willingness to use microtransit. The analysis reveals three salient classes of microtransit users: travel time savers with environmental awareness, riders with a neutral mindset, and pro-SR and travel cost savers.View the NCST Project Webpage

In rural areas, cost-effective transit service is challenging due to greater travel distances, lower population densities, and longer travel times than in cities. As a result, the people who rely on public transit contend with infrequent and slow service, and keeping a sufficient number of personal vehicles in reliable working order can be prohibitively expensive for low-income families. UC Davis partnered with the eight San Joaquin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organizations to identify and support development of three innovative mobility pilot concepts for the region. The first pilot is an electric vehicle (EV) carsharing service known as Míocar, located in affordable housing complexes in eight rural communities in Tulare and Kern counties. The second is a volunteer ridesharing service, known as VOGO, which supplements existing transit services in transport-disadvantaged rural areas in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. The third is a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform that allows planning and payment for fixed and demand-responsive transit services, including VOGO, in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. These pilots seek to (a) provide improved access to destinations for individuals with limited transportation alternatives, (b) and achieve greenhouse gas reductions through mode shifts from traditional internal combustion vehicles to EVs, ridesharing, and fixed transit. This report presents the methods and results for “before” and “after” evaluations conducted by UC Davis researchers to assess the performance and impacts of each pilot. The evaluations incorporate service usage data including telematics and MaaS application data, and survey data collected from pilot participants, to assess the programs beginning with pilot launch (2019 and2020) until November 2021. The results provide insights into participant characteristics and barriers to transportation, travel behavior, trip planning activities, and the extent to which the pilots addressed the travel needs of their target populations region.View the NCST Project Webpage

On-demand mobility services including transportation network companies (also known as ridesourcing and ridehailing) like Lyft and Uber are changing the way that people travel by providing dynamic mobility that can supplement public transit and personal-vehicle use. However, TNC services have been found to contribute to increasing vehicle mileage, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions. Pooling rides ⎯ sharing a vehicle by multiple passengers to complete journeys of similar origin and destination ⎯ can increase the average vehicle occupancy of TNC trips and thus mitigate some of the negative impacts. Several mobility companies have launched app-based pooling services in recent years including app-based carpooling services (e.g., Waze Carpool, Scoop) that match drivers with riders; pooled on-demand ride services (e.g., Uber Pool and Lyft Shared rides) that match multiple TNC users; and microtransit services (e.g., Bridj, Chariot, Via) that offer on-demand, flexibly routed service, typically in larger vehicles such as vans or shuttles. However, information on the potential impacts of these options is so far limited. This research employs a general population stated preference survey of four California metropolitan regions (Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area) in Fall 2018 to examine the opportunities and challenges for drastically expanding the market for pooling, accounting for differences in emergent travel behavior and preferences across the four metropolitan regions surveyed. The travel profiles, TNC use patterns, and attitudes and perceptions of TNCs and pooling are analyzed across key socio-demographic attributes to enrich behavioral understanding of marginalized and price sensitive users of on-demand ride services. This research further develops a discrete choice model to identify significant factors influencing a TNC user’s choice to pool or not to pool, as well as estimating a traveler’s value of time (VOT) across different portions of a TNC trip. This research provides key insights and social equity considerations for policies that could be employed to reduce vehicle miles traveled and emissions from passenger road transportation by incentivizing the use of pooled on-demand ride services and public transit

This research brief summarizes the findings from the associated study, which examined the potential to improve transportation system efficiency by reevaluating and redefining the role of public transit and its design principles in the new context of technology and shared mobility. Specifically, it evaluated the financial feasibility of an integrative, multimodal transportation system where public and private mobility services coexist to maximize economic and environmental benefits and free up public transit resources to be reallocated more efficiently.

Low-income rural residents, especially those who do not own a car, have limited transportation options for accessing jobs, health care, education, healthy food, and other basic services. Rural transit service is often expensive, infrequent, and hard to access because of long travel distances and low development densities. Transit providers face very high operating costs of fixed-route and dial-a-ride transit services because of low farebox recovery rates.Shared-use mobility services such as ridehailing and carsharing largely serve major metropolitan areas. However, rural governments are beginning to consider whether these types of services may be able to augment existing transit services while providing cost-effective transportation access to rural residents.This policy brief summarizes findings from a UC Davis study in which researchers compared the cost-effectiveness of existing inter-city transit service in rural disadvantaged communities in California’s San Joaquin Valley to hypothetical ridesharing and carsharing services. The researchers also reviewed existing shared-use mobility pilots and consulted with experts in shared mobility and local transportation planning to develop concepts for future shared mobility pilot programs in the San Joaquin Valley.View the NCST Project Webpage

In early 2016 the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority implemented a pilot program in partnership with Uber and United Taxi (a local company) to provide subsidized travel for trips to and from specified public transportation stops (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority). Since that time, similar pilots have sprung up throughout the US. Presumably, the proliferation of these pilots is due to early successes; likely measured by cost savings, increased ridership, expanded service areas, improved first/last mile connections, and increased visibility of ridehailing services. We would expect the outcomes of these pilots to be shared among public transportation operators, resulting in improvements as they are implemented in new locations over time. However, much of the information that might be used to evaluate these programs is confidential or proprietary, creating challenges for public transportation operators to discuss details with others. This project aims to identify the factors informing the implementation of these pilots and the pathways by which relevant information is shared among public transportation operators. Key questions are: Do transit agencies gather information independently; from one another, academic sources, or policy experts, or others? Are transit agencies primarily informed by potential ridehailing industry partners as they consider these partnerships and programs? And how do these different pathways impact the partnerships transit agencies form with ridehailing companies and the programs they launch?

Ideally, public transit, by moving more people using fewer vehicles, serves as a backbone of a transportation system. However, most transit systems in the United States suffer from low ridership and high operating costs, thus they provide a significantly compromised mobility service to the transportation system users. Under current transit system design principles, such as service area requirements, inefficiencies in resource use are almost inevitable. Given the opportunities brought by new mobile technology and the environment of mobility as a service, current transit system design principles need to be reevaluated and redefined to enable transit to serve as a backbone in the transportation system. In this seed-grant project, the researchers evaluated whether building an integrated multimodal public transportation system via reallocation of transit resources is financially feasible and environmentally sustainable. They also conducted an in-depth review of related literature and discussed other concerns regarding an integrated system. Based on the results from the case study and review of other recent studies, the authors draw an optimistic conclusion about an integrated service system where public and private mobility service providers coexist.

The motivations for this study stem from an uncertainty about whether on-demand ridehailing services such as Uber, Lyft and others, will exacerbate existing transportation issues, or help alleviate them. To that end, the goals of the project were to learn about the perspectives of stakeholders from a variety of sectors, on their reactions to policies and other actions that might enable on-demand services to help alleviate existing transportation issues including congestion, emissions and inequality of access and mobility.This study aims to address the following three questions: How well do stakeholders in different sectors and regions, agree about the potential outcomes related to on-demand ridehailing and sustainable transportation goals? What are stakeholder perspectives on the policies and strategies that might facilitate emerging on-demand transportation services to most effectively enhance sustainability and mobility outcomes? What decision making venues and approaches are supported by different stakeholders in the process, and how can these approaches be pursued in order to realize policy goals related to sustainability of on-demand ridehailing? I.e., what venues, and at what level can most effective policies be introduced to facilitate sustainability improvements in transportation by embracing on-demand ridehailing services.To answer these questions, a series of interviews were completed with stakeholders from California Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and Regional Transportation Planning Agencies (RTPAs), from state agencies, the ridehailing industry, and local planning agencies or transportation divisions of cities. The results of this study indicate that policy makers must consider the varied systems and contexts throughout the state; and likely throughout the US. Further, there is an existing dialogue on these topics among transportation professionals, public interest groups, academics and policy makers. In this study, the researchers took a systematic approach to documenting this dialogue and identifying meaningful messages and policy guidance that is not possible without a rigorous scientific approach.View the NCST Project Webpage

Shared-use mobility services largely serve major metropolitan areas. However, increasingly officials, who represent rural communities, want to know whether these types of services may be able to provide more cost-effective access to rural residents than is currently possible by fixed-route and dial-a-ride transit services. Many of these officials must contend with low farebox recovery rates that threaten transit funding and subsequent cutbacks in transit services that are often strongly opposed by constituents. In this study, the cost-effectiveness of existing inter-city transit service in rural disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Valley (California) is compared to hypothetical ridesharing and carsharing services. The results show significant potential to reduce transit costs and reinvest those cost saving to expand shared mobility services. The cost-effectiveness analysis is supplemented with reviews of existing shared-use mobility pilots and consultations with experts in shared mobility and local transportation planning.View the NCST Project Webpage

A number of stakeholders met with the ultimate goal of identifying inefficiencies faced by the freight system and putting forward a set of strategies to achieve a more efficient freight system. In doing so, a key first step was to provide insight as to the possible root cause(s) of major inefficiencies affecting the system. In addition to assessing inefficiencies, this research describes some of the aspects and necessary conditions that need to be considered when defining or identifying remediating strategies. Moreover, the research discusses a number of efficiency improvement strategies. These include:• Voluntary Off-Hour Delivery Programs.• Receiver-led Consolidation.• Development of a Chassis Pool of Pools Fully Integrated System.• Improvement of Traffic Mitigation Fee Programs.• Implement Advanced Appointment/ Reservation Systems.• Developing an Integrated System for Dray Operations and Services.• Load Matching and Maximizing Capacity.In light of the Governor’s Executive Order, it is imperative that the various public agencies in the State initiate, continue or reinforce efforts to address some of these issues.View the NCST Project Webpage

This study addresses a capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows and simultaneous pickup and delivery (VRPTWPD) for scheduling bus-type taxis formerly served by regular buses. The effects of varying the maximum number of passenger seats on service quality and costs are investigated. Taiwan's government has subsidized public transport in order to ensure consistency between service shifts and demands, improve the efficiency of public transport operations, and maintain an ongoing supply of services while reducing the number of scooters and/or private cars on roads to minimize traffic congestion. Ultimately, the intent is to reduce government subsidies further and maintain service quality at reasonable levels. Transit planners have also introduced the Demand Responsive Transit System (DRTS) to connect routes. Particularity in rural areas, local transit planners have replaced buses with taxis to form a bus-type taxi service that increases efficiency. As a consequence, the transit service in low-density or rural areas has not been abandoned. The study acknowledges that optimal routes for successful bus-type taxis services vary by area. Routing and scheduling results will assist route planners' efforts to provide sufficient transit services in rural areas. The study results also suggest that further reductions in government subsidies are possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional public transportation (CPT) services in rural areas are among others confronted with the accessibility problem and low traveler quantities. Demand responsive transportation (DRT) is an emerging mainstream concept, which aims to offer flexible mobility services to customers and also to solve the aforementioned problems of CPT providers. Studies and simulations about the comparison of CPT and DRT mostly focus on urban areas. Therefore, this paper is a case study of CPT vs. DRT services in the rural town of Colditz: A stop-based and a door-to-door DRT service is analyzed along with a CPT bus line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract An increasing number of flexible micro transport services (FMTS) is an emerging response to tackling sustainability issues of urban mobility. Meeting the challenges of changing user requirements and difficulty in accomplishing modal shift policy goals, FMTS can respond, owing to advances in technological solutions. However, these novel services are still facing a range of barriers, including institutional, cultural, and economic hindrances. Moreover, there is a general lack of knowledgebase related to FMTS deployment in urban areas. Consequently, the objective of this article is to present policy and planning lessons on urban FMTS. The lessons are derived from a unique FMTS pilot in the Helsinki Capital Region. This FMTS pilot, called Kutsuplus, was operational from October 2012 to December 2015. The study includes an analysis of operational data, as well as policy-making processes, including expert interviews. The key findings provide a range of guidelines and lessons for future urban FMTS. The first set of transferable guidelines relates to the Kutsuplus setup and organization. The second set concerns fare determination and financing. The third set involves decision-making processes and stakeholder involvement. In addition, a range of other lessons are highlighted for future pilots. The results point towards the recommendation to look beyond long-term financial sustainability by taking into account a range of interdependent factors, starting from the initial planning stage. Highlights • The objective of this article is to present policy and planning lessons on urban FMTS. • The lessons are derived from a unique large-scale FMTS pilot in the Helsinki, which was operational from year 2012 to 2015. • The study includes an analysis of operational data, as well as policy-making processes, including expert interviews. • The study recommends to look beyond long-term financial sustainability by taking into account a range of crucial factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional public transportation (CPT) services in rural areas are among others confronted with the accessibility problem and low traveler quantities. Demand responsive transportation (DRT) is an emerging mainstream concept, which aims to offer flexible mobility services to customers and also to solve the aforementioned problems of CPT providers. Studies and simulations about the comparison of CPT and DRT mostly focus on urban areas. Therefore, this paper is a case study of CPT vs. DRT services in the rural town of Colditz: A stop-based and a door-to-door DRT service is analyzed along with a CPT bus line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dial-a-ride problems are concerned with the design of efficient vehicle routes for transporting individual persons from specific origin to specific destination locations. In real-life this operational planning problem is often complicated by several factors. Users may have special requirements (e.g. to be transported in a wheelchair) while service providers operate a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles from multiple depots in their service area. In this paper, a general dial-a-ride problem in which these three real-life aspects may simultaneously be taken into account is introduced: the Multi-Depot Heterogeneous Dial-A-Ride Problem (MD-H-DARP). Both a three- and two-index formulation are discussed. A branch-and-cut algorithm for the standard dial-a-ride problem is adapted to exactly solve small problem instances of the MD-H-DARP. To be able to solve larger problem instances, a new deterministic annealing meta-heuristic is proposed. Extensive numerical experiments are presented on different sets of benchmark instances for the homogeneous and the heterogeneous single depot dial-a-ride problem. Instances for the MD-H-DARP are introduced as well. The branch-and-cut algorithm provides considerably better results than an existing algorithm which uses a less compact formulation. All seven previously unsolved benchmark instances for the heterogeneous dial-a-ride problem could be solved to optimality within a matter of seconds. While computation times of the exact algorithm increase drastically with problem size, the proposed meta-heuristic algorithm provides near-optimal solutions within limited computation time for all instances. Several best known solutions for unsolved instances are improved and the algorithm clearly outperforms current state-of-the-art heuristics for the homogeneous and heterogeneous dial-a-ride problem, both in terms of solution quality and computation time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]