Public Benefit

Many cities are rolling out bike share programs. However, few studies have evaluated how bike share systems (BSS) are used to quantify their sustainability impacts. This study proposes a Bike Share Emission Reduction Estimation Model (BS-EREM) to quantify the environmental benefits from bike share trips and compare the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions from BSS in eight cities in the United States, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The BS-EREM model stochastically estimates the transportation modes substituted by bike share trips, considering factors such as trip distance, trip purpose, trip start time, the accessibility of public transits, and historical distributions of transportation mode choices.

The Handbook provides methods to quantify GHG emission reductions from a specified list of measures, primarily focused on project-level actions. The Handbook also includes a method to assess potential benefits of different climate vulnerability reduction measures, as well as measures that can be implemented to improve health and equity, again at the project level.

Many studies have noted that denser and more accessible environments with higher level-of-service (LOS) tend to encourage higher levels of walking and bicycling activity. As streets are increasingly designed to facilitate safe cycling through built environment interventions, little has been done to evaluate perceptions of safety on different typologies, particularly one vs. two-way corridors. Theory would suggest that many individuals frame their commutes based in-part on the perceived safety of the environment, yet little research looks at varying street design and this perception. This study uses a moving camera approach to evaluate the perceived cycling comfort for drivers and cyclists on different roadway designs (multi-lane, one way; two-way, bidirectional street; single-lane, one-way).

Automobile-dependent planning has changed automobiles from a luxury into a necessity. Excessive vehicle costs leave many households without money to purchase essential food, shelter and healthcare. They need more affordable transportation options.

Bike share systems are expanding efforts to be more equitable and accessible to everyone by offering adaptive bicycle options to people who might otherwise be unable to ride. These systems tend to range from the inclusion of electric bikes and standard trikes into the existing systems to offer a more full range of adaptive bicycle options for use at rental locations. Surveys of residents living in several low-income communities of color (n = 1,885) are used to explore the potential need for adaptive bike share options in urban locations. A national survey of cities and bike share operators (n = 70) is used to document the prevalence and basic models of adaptive bike share programming currently in place. Interviews conducted with bike share representatives in select cities with adaptive bike share programs provide context and details on how specific programs operate. Finally, interviews with adaptive bike share participants (n = 5) in Portland, Oregon, help to illuminate users’ experiences, including the perceived value and potential improvements for adaptive bike share.

This report explores how smart mobility technologies can address the current and future needs of transportation disadvantaged communities. It looks at the barriers different communities experience regarding access to smart mobility technologies, and potential solutions to overcoming these barriers.

This resource describes the role of data in making mobility as a service (MaaS) effective. It describes why MaaS is valuable and demonstrates several use cases for MaaS data, explaining why access to certain types of data is important. It also explains existing barriers to data access, and gives recommendations for moving toward access of that data.

Cities around the world are beginning to prioritize people over vehicles by closing major streets to traffic and opening them up to pedestrians, cyclists, public transit.

This paper provides a review of recent studies of rail transit's impact on property values and discusses the types of impacts rail transit can have on properties. It also outlines the reasons for contradictions between results of different studies.

Since John Bela and his collaborators installed the first temporary park on a parking space in San Francisco in 2005, Park(ing) Day has become a global event.

The city of Tainan, Taiwan has plans to demolish an abandoned mall and transform it into a public park.

Gas stations can be tricky sites to redevelop because they are often contaminated. However, developers around New York have recognized the potential in their often desirable locations and converted them into a variety of uses such as shops, offices, housing and places for generating renewable energy.

Columbus Commons is a six-acre public park in downtown Columbus, Ohio that replaced a former shopping mall, and has transformed the downtown into a walkable community.

San Francisco’s emerging trend of transforming parking spots into “parklets” has sparked residents, businesses and nonprofits from around the city to come up with creative ways to turn parking into public space.

Recent research on autonomous vehicles (AV) has shown a substantive dive into the technical aspects of AVs, but our understanding of the secondary effects of AVs is minimal in comparison (Glancy, 2015; Mitteregger, Soteropoulos, Bröthaler, & Dorner, 2019; Terry & Bachmann, 2019). This article offers a look at how automation of one of the cornerstones of many municipal government—solid waste collection—could be altered with the advent of AVs.

San Francisco’s “parklet” trend of transforming parking spots into small public spaces has mixed reviews among residents. Some people think that they are provide spaces for neighborhoods to come together, while some believe they exacerbate gentrification.

GM's Cruise is working towards making an efficient, safe, and affordable new transportation mode. Self-described as "what you'd build if there were no cars," Cruise creates an experience geared towards the rider.

Many developers are trying to keep their malls relevant as traditional big-box retailers announce store closures. This articles highlights five examples of malls around the U.S. that have plans to reinvent themselves as mixed use and experiential destinations.

Many traditional malls have come up with creative ways to transform themselves to stay relevant in the 21st century and maintain sources of revenue as store closures rise. The typical malls with large atriums, department stores, food courts, and parking lots are finding new uses for these spaces including fitness centers, apartments, event spaces, markets, and mini theme parks.

This report develops a framework for measuring safety in automated vehicles. It ranges in considerations from measuring safety in artificial development phases to deployment phases.

Robin Chase, co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar and cofounder of NUMO, discusses the misconceptions around Mobility as a Service and its potentials for public benefit.

“This research aimed to look at the future of mobility and MaaS from a perspective of society, to look not only at the challenges to enabling a MaaS ecosystem but the potential direct and indirect effects on the wider transport system and city.”

This is the sponsorship brochure for the 2020 Urbanism Next European Conference.

Metro data enables deep analysis of cyclist and pedestrian activity including popular or avoided routes, peak commute times, intersection wait times, and origin/destination zones. Metro processes this data for compatibility with geographic information system (GIS) environments.

Fluicity is a citizen engagement solution that allows collective decision making around topics of general interest.

An equity atlas is a tool that consists of a number of maps which show the relationships between different determinants of health and well-being and the geography of a region. By providing a visual depiction of disparities, equity atlases can play a powerful role in guiding policy, planning, and strategic investments to create more equitable communities.

CoAXs uses open data and free software to enable users to test new transportation scenarios in real time. Users can activate and deactivate selected hypothetical and existing transit routes; examine effects of changes such as in bus speeds or frequencies; and explore the impact of these changes on different locations in a region. Great example of work done in Boston.

Resources designed for people who will be conducting community engagement activities in the context of enhancing mobility and public space to co-create more vibrant, healthy, and equitable communities.

Motion sickness is a serious consideration on any car trip where you’re not driving. So what are we supposed to do in self-driving vehicles? Researchers are finally looking into this question with an experiment designed to see just what makes people like us so sick.

The New Mobility Playbook is a set of plays, policies, and strategies that will position Seattle to foster new mobility options while prioritizing safety, equity, affordability, and sustainability in the transportation system.

The article describes the trend of mall development strategy and how the now model of development is integrated into the new lifestyle and space of community.

A new era of shopping centers is upon us. They’re beginning to look and function less like traditional malls and more like lifestyle centers with a strong community vibe.

"The research described in this report shows that even with the greater global warming emissions from manufacturing (largely because of lithium-ion battery manufacturing), a battery-electric vehicle still results in significantly lower global warming emissions over its lifetime than its gasoline counterpart. Other studies on this topic have come to similar conclusions."

Is Paris in the position to be able to offer free transit to all? This article breaks down the barriers and examines how it has become reality in other cities.

"This report summarizes the status of twenty-nine partnerships between TNCs and public bodies around the United States designed to improve mobility." The analysis explains when the programs were or are active, if they were modified, the financial structure and performance audits.

This is an overview of how the Portland Climate Action Plan was revised to include the equitable disparities that existed in the first one. It lays out the process strategies, budget considerations, and people that were involved and brought along for the process.

SAFE believes that AV-related labor displacement concerns—many of which have been expressed sensationally—must be addressed seriously rather than merely dismissed out of hand or repeated without verification. In response to these concerns, SAFE commissioned a panel of highly regarded transportation and labor economists to conduct a fact-based and rigorous assessment of the economic costs and benefits of AVs, including labor impacts.

This article briefly outline the success of upgrades made to a bus line in the Twin Cities. So far ridership has increased 30%.

"This paper presents a comprehensive discussion of the value capture mechanisms that cities can and do use to help finance their public transport systems. It highlights the most important findings from the literature and adds to it with new insights gained through case studies of public transit finance in six European and American cities. The objective is to inform a lively and productive dialogue on non-fare sources of public transport finance, and ultimately to find the best ways to finance the maintenance and extension of transit service in cities around the world."

The immense mobility needs in black and brown neighborhoods are the result of systematic, significant and sustained disinvestment. Here's what the mayor can do to reverse the damage.

With this paper, RMI hopes to (1) offer cities and other mobility and built environment stakeholders an experimentation toolkit that puts them in a position to more quickly unlock the full potential of new mobility in cities designed to shape and enable it, and (2) engage stakeholders in further codeveloping and exploring a concept for living, flexible, and collaborative experimentation sites we’re calling MOD Cities.

This article examines the burgeoning future of electric buses and the possible impacts it may have on society.

This report estimates that by 2030, a substantial share of the 175 million Americans who live in the nation's largest cities will turn to SAEVs, cutting transportation costs by nearly 50%, reclaiming time instead of losing hours a day to traffic and putting up with all the expense and hassle of urban automobile ownership. SAEV fleets will account for nearly 25% of all auto passenger miles traveled in the US by 2030. Such a change will have an enormous impact on health, safety, and quality of life in cities: Traffic accidents and fatalities will be reduced by nearly two-thirds. Pollution will be drastically curtailed. Cities can repurpose millions of square feet once used for parking to new green spaces or commercial uses while securing more affordable mobility and accessibility for elderly, disabled, and low-income people.

NYC Transit and MTA bus have a combined fleet of about 5,700 buses for public transportation in New York City. The fleet currently consists of a mix of diesel, hybrid diesel and CNG (compressed natural gas) buses. Electric buses have vastly lower greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions than the current fleet. The MTA will have challenges associated with a changeover to electric buses, but effective planning can make the change nearly invisible to customers. The recommendation of this analysis is that New York City should begin taking steps to convert the bus fleet to all electric.

This report is an analysis of 153 "state of the city" speeches by mayors between January and April of 2019. They have been analyzed to identify the 10 major issues cities are talking about and other major issues that are being prioritized across the country.

This paper discusses the current and future state of AVs, and the implications for policy at the federal, state, and local levels. It does not intend to summarize all the research nor provide new analysis of the potential implications of AVs. The goal is to provide concrete and substantive recommendations for policymakers in order to responsibly deploy AVs on public roads.

A San Francisco judge ruled that Motivate, the bike-share operator that Lyft purchased one year ago, has exclusive rights to rent both docked and dockless bikes in the city.

Summary of America's Transportation Infrastructure Act.

The purpose of this White Paper is to help cities prepare in advance for autonomous technology by passing formal resolutions and setting in motion Smart Mobility Plans. The document covers: Terminology, Benefits and risks associated with autonomous technology, Common autonomous vehicle deployment phases, How changing transportation technology affects governance, Approaches for harnessing benefits while limiting risks, Examples, Developing resolutions – local context, Conclusion and sample resolution language. The sample language and bullet points can also be used for presentations, policy papers, Comprehensive or Transportation Plan updates and memos. Much of the information is also helpful when drafting policy on other types of technology, including ridehailing/sharing services and smart city technology (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT) and sensors).

This report examines how urban living affects residents’ mental health and happiness, and ways to use this information to create saner and happier cities. Some often-cited studies suggest that urban living increases mental illness and unhappiness, but a critical review indicates that much of this research is incomplete and biased, and the issues are complex, often involving trade-offs between risk factors. City living may increase some forms of psychosis and mood disorders, drug addiction, and some people’s unhappiness, but tends reduce dementia, alcohol abuse and suicide rates, and many people are happier in cities than they would be in smaller communities. This report examines specific mechanisms by which urban living can affect mental health and happiness, and identities practical strategies that communities and individuals can use to increase urban mental health and happiness. This analysis suggests that it is possible to create sane and happy cities.

A plan to develop a data standard for technology that could monitor and manage various mobility services has raised privacy fears.

Over the past few years, many studies have provided detailed descriptions of the potential benefits associated with the introduction of autonomous vehicles, such as improvements in traffic flows, local and global emissions, traffic safety, cost efficiency of public and private transport operations, etc. Additionally, the mobilization of mobility-impaired people and the independent car use of travelers without a driver’s license have been identified as potential benefits for users. However, merely estimating the benefits of these direct (or first-order) effects is unlikely to show the full picture of the consequences that will emerge once autonomous vehicles enter the roads. In this paper, we therefore put emphasis on discussing systemic (or second-order) effects. The paper presents a conceptual exploration of these effects based on literature and research findings to date. We show that these systemic effects have the potential – especially in urban areas and without adequate policy intervention – to eliminate at least some of the benefits initially associated with autonomous vehicles. Following this systemic view on autonomous vehicles, we discuss policy aspects for responsible authorities and planners on how to prepare transportation systems for the challenges related to the introduction of autonomous vehicles, and conclude with areas of research that seem highly important in terms of further investigation in this context.

Public transit accounts for only 1% of U.S. passenger miles traveled but nevertheless attracts strong public support. Using a simple choice model, we predict that transit riders are likely to be individuals who commute along routes with the most severe roadway delays. These individuals’ choices thus have very high marginal impacts on congestion. We test this prediction with data from a sudden strike in 2003 by Los Angeles transit workers. Estimating a regression discontinuity design, we find that average highway delay increases 47% when transit service ceases. This effect is consistent with our model’s predictions and many times larger than earlier estimates, which have generally concluded that public transit provides minimal congestion relief. We find that the net benefits of transit systems appear to be much larger than previously believed.

Shared micromobility devices could thrive in a city like New York where individuals are encouraged to get out of their cars due to impending congestion pricing tolls and an expansion of protected bike lanes, according to the report. But biker and pedestrian safety remain a major issue in U.S. cities. Therefore, the most effective way to get people to use micromobility devices is to make them easy and safe to use, INRIX Transportation Analyst Trevor Reed told Smart Cities Dive in an email.

This report aims to pull back Amazon’s cloak of invisibility, it shows how the company’s tightening grip is stifling competition, eroding jobs, and threatening communities - it presents new data; draws on interviews with dozens of manufacturers, retailers, and others; and synthesizes a broad body of previous reporting and scholarship.

We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history. By 2030, within 10 years of regulatory approval of autonomous vehicles (AVs), 95% of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets, not individuals, in a new business model we call “transportas-a-service” (TaaS). The TaaS disruption will have enormous implications across the transportation and oil industries, decimating entire portions of their value chains, causing oil demand and prices to plummet, and destroying trillions of dollars in investor value — but also creating trillions of dollars in new business opportunities, consumer surplus and GDP growth.

The next time you need to book an Uber home from Pearson Airport, you won’t need your phone to do so. Toronto’s largest airport has just implemented a new Uber pilot that makes it easier for travellers to get home, as smartphones are no longer needed to book a ride.

The next big political fight over data privacy may center on an unlikely piece of technology: The scooters currently flying around streets and scattered on sidewalks in cities across the country.

This blog post summarizes a larger article written by University of Michigan faculty member Saif Benjaafar's research on smart technology. It specifically focuses on his analysis of ride-sharing companies.

One of the big promises of self-driving vehicles is the idea that autonomous vehicles will liberate people from driving. In this vision of the future, passengers will scan news reports on phones and tablets, pour-over notes and briefings for important meetings, and view videos on their handheld devices. They will reclaim the hours once wasted clinging to a steering wheel. Unless they end up developing a headache or becoming dizzy, drowsy, or nauseated.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) represent a potentially disruptive yet beneficial change to our transportation system. This new technology has the potential to impact vehicle safety, congestion, and travel behavior. All told, major social AV impacts in the form of crash savings, travel time reduction, fuel efficiency and parking benefits are estimated to approach $2000 to per year per AV, and may eventually approach nearly $4000 when comprehensive crash costs are accounted for. Yet barriers to implementation and mass-market penetration remain. Initial costs will likely be unaffordable. Licensing and testing standards in the U.S. are being developed at the state level, rather than nationally, which may lead to inconsistencies across states. Liability details remain undefined, security concerns linger, and without new privacy standards, a default lack of privacy for personal travel may become the norm. The impacts and interactions with other components of the transportation system, as well as implementation details, remain uncertain. To address these concerns, the federal government should expand research in these areas and create a nationally recognized licensing framework for AVs, determining appropriate standards for liability, security, and data privacy.

In recent years, economic, environmental, and social forces have quickly given rise to the “sharing economy,” a collective of entrepreneurs and consumers leveraging technology to share resources, save money, and generate capital. Homesharing services, such as Airbnb, and peer-to-peer carsharing services, such as Getaround, have become part of a sociodemographic trend that has pushed the sharing economy from the fringe and more to the mainstream. The role of shared mobility in the broader landscape of urban mobility has become a frequent topic of discussion. Major shared transportation modes—such as bikesharing, carsharing, ridesourcing, and alternative transit services—are changing how people travel and are having a transformative effect on mobility and local planning.

Google Maps will show users where a Lime vehicle is available, how long it will take to walk there, a price estimate as well as battery range.

Segway-Ninebot Group, a Beijing-based electric scooter maker, "unveiled a scooter that can return itself to charging stations without a driver, a potential boon for the burgeoning scooter-sharing industry.