About Susan Shaheen (Edit profile)

Susan Shaheen is Co-Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley (sshaheen@berkeley.edu).

Ridesourcing’s Impact and Role in Urban Transportation

Susan Shaheen, Nelson Chan, Lisa Rayle

App-based, on-demand ride services—also known as Transportation Network Companies (TNCs)—have grown rapidly in recent years and caused debate in the passenger transportation industry. Advances in information and communication technology have enabled these services to provide a wide variety of real-time and demand-responsive trips. Companies such as Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar (now defunct) have developed smartphone apps whereby passengers can “source” a ride from a private passenger vehicle driven by a non-commercially licensed driver (usually). These apps communicate the passenger’s location to the driver via GPS and charge a distance-based fare. The driver is paid approximately 80 percent of the fare; the company keeps the rest. Many of these apps maintain a rating system that allows drivers and passengers to rate each other after the trip is completed. A passenger’s credit card information can be saved within the system to facilitate future trips.

Unraveling the Modal Impacts of Bikesharing

Susan Shaheen and Elliot Martin

Public bikesharing has emerged as one of the latest transportation innovations, transforming North American cities and providing people with more transportation options. Much attention has focused on how new bikesharing programs fit in with the largely auto-oriented transportation culture. But there is another fascinating question: how do bikesharing programs influence the travel patterns of their members with respect to travel by rail, bus, and on foot?

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Worldwide Bikesharing

Susan Shaheen and Stacey Guzman

Bikesharing has evolved greatly since the first program was launched in the Netherlands in the mid-1960s. As of May 2011, there were an estimated 136 bikesharing programs in 165 cities around the world, with 237,000 bikes on the streets. In the Americas, bikesharing activity has spread to Canada, Mexico, the US, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Asia, which represents the fastest-growing bikesharing market today, has programs in China, South Korea, and Taiwan.

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The Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Ownership

Elliot Martin and Susan Shaheen

Carsharing in North America is changing the transportation landscape of metropolitan regions across the continent. Carsharing systems give members access to an automobile for short-term use. The shared cars are distributed across a network of locations within a metropolitan area. Members can access the vehicles at any time with a reservation and are charged by time or by mile. Carsharing thus provides some of the benefits of personal automobility without the costs of owning a private vehicle.

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2018-02-14T23:52:40+00:00Categories: ACCESS 38, Spring 2011|Tags: , |

Smarter Parking at Transit Stations

Susan Shaheen and Charlene Kemmerer

Transit stations, such as many of the outlying stations along the BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area, provide parking so riders can easily get to and from the station. At first parking spots at BART stations were free to whoever showed up earliest to park. Then in 2002, BART began offering monthly reservations on some parking spots for a fee, so that riders who couldn’t rush out of the house to arrive at the station before anyone else also had the opportunity to park. Commuters without the monthly permits are faced with a dilemma if they want to take BART and can’t get to the station early. Do they risk deviating from their driving commute route to try to find a spot at the station? If they don’t find one, they will have wasted time and gas, and they’d then have to find their way back to their driving route, now a bit later, and reinsert themselves into the stream of traffic.

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