Shared-Use Mobility Services Can Improve Access and Reduce Costs in Rural Disadvantaged Communities

Caroline Rodier and Laura Podolsky

Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis

Abstract: 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

Keywords: Social and Behavioral Sciences; Benefit cost analysis; Demand responsive transportation; Intercity transportation; Low income groups; Paratransit services; Rural transportation; Shared mobility; Transportation disadvantaged persons; Travel costs; Vehicle sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/1wc452qm.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt1wc452qm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().