The impacts of shared mobility on multimodal and equitable accessibility

Project

The impacts of shared mobility on multimodal and equitable accessibility

Timeline

2021-2025

Supervisor

Prof. Karst Geurs

PhD student

Luqi Dong



In recent years, shared mobility programs (e.g., shared bikes, scooters, cars) have proliferated all over the world. The popularity of shared mobility services has provided a good solution to the “first and last mile” questions by affecting individual travel choices significantly. However, individual characteristics (e.g., demographics, digital skills) affecting shared mobility usage can be barriers for residents to exploit these emerging mobility options to improve accessibility. And shared mobility services aren’t spatially equally distributed (concentrated in large cities), and specific user groups don’t have the capabilities, opportunities or skills to use shared modes, such as low-income groups and people with low digital skills. To date, only a few researchers have developed multimodal accessibility models including shared modes. How shared mobility services contribute to overall accessibility changes (including all possible combinations of travel modes in door-to-door trips) has not been studied.

This research aims to examine the impacts of shared mobility on multimodal and equitable accessibility. In this PhD project, individual characteristics will be collected in a survey to provide the basis (RQ1) for developing multimodal accessibility frameworks (RQ2,3) which will be used to explore the impacts of shared mobility service changes (RQ4) on accessibility and equity. The research novelties are the development of multimodal accessibility frameworks including shared modes and the application of this model to evaluate the impacts of shared mobility on accessibility of multiple activities and equity.