Project Summary
The persistent rise in global warming effects and attention to fairness in transportation access and outcomes in the US, prompts examining transportation solutions for extending accessible, reliable, and equitable transportation systems in the US and abroad. Over the past decade, public transportation agencies have been experimenting with offering shared micromobility services (such as shared-bikes and electric scooters) to address a range of service gaps. These services are expected to support transportation equity goals by offering a significant boost in transportation accessibility, particularly to vulnerable travelers who do not have access to cars, (Murphy et al., 2021; Shaheen and Cohen, 2021). Yet, further joint improvements to shared micro-mobility and transit service accessibility are hindered by limited information on real world user costs and how such costs influence travel behaviors, particularly for more disadvantaged travelers. As bike share services from public transit agencies begin to shift from pilots to longer term offerings, evaluations of the impacts of such services to support design, sustainability, and equity goals grow more urgent. Researchers will evaluate the benefits of integrated transit-micromobility services (i.e. integrated bus and bikeshare services) for encouraging more multimodal travel and connectivity, and to provide policy guidance on how to align such services with the travel needs of disadvantaged travelers.
This proposal involves a targeted travel diary data collection effort to understand the daily travel needs of disadvantaged traveler groups, with emphasis on low income, transit dependent, un/under employed, elderly, racially minoritized travelers, and multimodal travelers users. The research team proposes a mix of survey instruments including paper, online, app-based, wearable tracker components, and community workshops to achieve higher representation from disadvantaged travelers and to capture travel behaviors and preferences. The strategy for targeting vulnerable travelers will build off the PI’s past work on travel data collection from vulnerable communities in Michigan, funded by a National Science Foundation grant (#1831347). Participant recruitment will be done through a partnership with People for Mobility Justice. This organization serves 10s of 1000’s of Black, Latino, and Indigenous travelers in LA by interfacing with local planning and policy stakeholders and advocating for transportation equity. Their network of travelers and community members will be leveraged for survey recruitment, for a target of 1000 responses. The data will then be used to perform scenario analysis on a set of joint bus and bike share scenarios. This is a comparison of individual level accessibility benefits associated with each alternative scenario.
