Catching Up with the Rapidly Transforming Transportation Landscape

In the last few years, technological advances have been changing the transportation system in ways unanticipated and unprecedented. Bike-share and car-share offered alternatives heretofore nonexistent. Then, in swept Uber and Lyft and other “Transportation Network Companies,” or TNCs, and mobile apps that could completely change the ways people move around in their communities.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a Committee for Review of Innovative Urban Mobility Services to conduct a consensus study on “technology-enabled transportation services,” including car-share, bike-share, TNCs, ride-sharing companies and mobile apps. Its just-released report, “Between Public and Private Mobility: Examining the Rise of Technology-Enabled Transportation Services,” [PDF] raises open-ended questions about how these new services might affect current and future transportation systems, and what policymakers and planners ought to be thinking about.

And, it cautions, well-thought-out policies and consistent regulations will be needed if we are to reap the benefits of these services and avoid negative consequences.

“Our purpose,” said Susan Shaheen, director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley and one of the authors of the report, “was to study these emerging transportation services and the roles they are playing and might play in the future: to look at what do we know, and what we don't know.”

“These new services have only been on the ground for three years,” said Shaheen. “The committee convened eighteen months ago: at the time, there was no UberPool, no LyftLine. There was no microtransit—except for some informal services--when we started this study.”

The committee studied current regulations and how they may need to be adapted, the economic consequences of (some) people having easier access to rides, questions about labor and employment, safety and security, insurance, and equity and access.

“These are evolutionary,” said Shaheen, “and could completely change the way people travel, their relationships with cars, the way we use land, parking, where people choose to live. We don't have a lot of data, and there's not a lot of understanding, because these services are getting ahead of policy.”

The report raises a lot of questions. How might people adopt and adapt to these new travel options? What kinds of new regulations will be needed to ensure safety, efficiency, and a level playing field? How can these new services solve, rather than add to, transportation equity and access for people who most need it?

For example, does the existence of a ride service like Uber reduce drunk driving? Perhaps, says the report:

Will people using these new services own fewer cars, take fewer trips? How will that affect parking needs and congestion?

“Reduced vehicle ownership creates a positive feedback loop in which even larger VMT reductions result,” says the report.

However, it is also possible that the services offered by Lyft, Uber, and the like will have the opposite effect.

“What form the new mobility services will take as they evolve and whether and how they will affect travel behavior and demand, the use of all other modes (including taxis and limousines), private vehicle ownership, and residential and commercial location preferences remain to be seen,” the report continues, “as these options grow and serve different market segments and geographic areas.” A lack of information in general about the scale, growth, and operations of these new services makes it difficult to plan for them and regulate them.

Of particular interest is the question of whether these private services will enhance or inhibit fairness and access, especially for those who currently have the most difficulty getting around.

Regulatory issues are related to this as well. If TNCs are just “ridematching and payment processing services,” says the report, their obligation to accommodate special needs is unclear.

“There's been so much discussion about the transformative potential--the disruptive potential--of existing transportation services by the arrival of tech-enabled services,” said Shaheen. “But we don't yet know what those changes are, in part because the landscape is changing so rapidly” and researchers are having a hard time keeping up.

“This hasn't happened a lot in transportation; usually change is incremental. Now it's almost the opposite of that,” said Shaheen. “In terms of the policy environment, things have evolved notably since we conducted the study.”

The big questions are what are the truly transformative changes these technologies might bring. So far, there isn't widespread evidence of transformation. Yet.

“What potential could there be if people really do change their behavior?” asked Shaheen. “And is that going to happen? These are pretty important policy issues that need to be addressed, particularly as these services grow, in case this transformation is indeed occurring.”

The study concludes with general recommendations for policymakers and others to consider, including the responsibility to steer these new technologies towards improving access while minimizing environmental costs. These include recommendations to revisit existing regulations, like the inconsistent regulatory landscape for taxis, and find ways to make them more consistent and fair.

Policymakers must also, say the report's authors, find ways to integrate these new services into existing transportation systems, including transit.

And, as always, more research is needed. Policymakers should identify the information they need and require companies to provide it to them, so that this planning process becomes less of a guessing game.