Transportation network companies (TNCs) have introduced shared-ride versions of their ordinary services, such as UberPool or Lyft Line. The concept is simple: passengers pay less in fares for an incremental increase in time spent picking up and dropping off other riders. This paper focuses on the social and behavioral considerations of shared rides, which have not been explored as thoroughly as time and cost trade-offs in transportation. A survey of TNC users conducted through Mechanical Turk in June and July of 2016, which had 997 respondents across the United States, found that ( a) users of dynamic ridesharing services reported that social interactions were relevant to mode choice, although not as much as traditional factors such as time and cost; ( b) overall, the possibility of having a negative social interaction was more of a deterrent to use of dynamic ridesharing than the potential of having a positive social interaction was an incentive; ( c) there was evidence that a substantial number of riders harbored feelings of prejudice toward passengers of different social class and race, and these passengers were much more likely to prefer having more information about potential future passengers; ( d) most dynamic ridesharing users were motivated by ease and speed, compared with walking and public transportation; and ( e) safety in dynamic ridesharing was an important issue, especially for women, many of whom reported feeling unsafe and preferred to be matched with passengers of the same sex.

Although transit buses have a relatively small impact on greenhouse gas emissions, they have a larger impact on urban air quality, have commercially available electric models, and have historically commercialized clean technologies that enabled deployment in other heavy-duty vehicles. This paper investigates what factors affect transit agencies’ decisions to go beyond electric bus pilots to larger scale deployments, with the goal of identifying strategies to enable an accelerated transition to an electrified fleet. This mixed methods analysis utilized quantitative total cost of ownership analysis and qualitative interviews to study the barriers and drivers of electric bus investment for transit fleets in three case study states: California, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. A total cost of ownership analysis estimated electric buses are already more cost-effective than diesel buses in many agency contexts, but are sensitive to key parameters such as annual mileage, fossil fuel costs, and electricity tariffs and supporting policies that vary widely. Though multiple agencies in California reported planning to fully electrify their fleets, outside California where less supportive policies exist, fewer agencies reported planning to procure additional electric buses, primarily owing to high first cost and undesirable tradeoffs with maintaining transit service levels. Interview respondents also reported other substantial barriers such as oversubscribed grant programs, charging infrastructure costs, electricity costs, and additional operational complexity, suggesting a need for multiple complementary policies to overcome these barriers and ensure agencies can transition to a new technology without affecting transit service.

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