Filling Service Gaps

Shared mobility

NRU
Aug. 24, 2016
By Leah Wong

Modes of shared mobility have the potential to fill service gaps in transportation networks, limit congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But to maximize the benefits of shared mobility, policymakers will need to take a proactive and collaborative approach to regulating and encouraging the use of these emerging technologies.

A recently released report from the Mowat Centre suggests that municipalities should take a proactive approach to regulating new mobility options, such as bike sharing, car sharing, ride sourcing, ride sharing, micro-transit and shared parking. By seamlessly integrating these shared modes with other transportation assets, they can improve local service.

“Policymakers need to take steps now that take into account these emerging technologies and ensure the opportunities associated with them are effectively leveraged,” Mowat Centre policy associate Sara Ditta told NRU. “These new models of mobility are here and likely to only grow in size. The rise of shared mobility will continue to change the way people travel.”

Enabled by the sharing economy, innovators in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area include the SoBi Hamilton bike share system, private-car rental service Turo and car share networks such as ZipCar and Enterprise Autoshare.

“The long-term impact of these technologies is still being determined, but there are some potential benefits with the growth of shared mobility that ideally could be realized in the
GTHA,” said Ditta. Early forms of micro-transit, for example, are showing how shared mobility can be used to address the first-mile/last-mile challenge associated with public transit.

Milton Transit, for example, utilizes an evening drop-off service that departs from the town’s GO station based on train arrivals and takes residents home using a customized route within a defined service area.

“One of the biggest issues in Milton is that the train operates on a CP Rail line so GO Transit has a limited ability to coordinate fixed times for departure and arrivals. They are all over the board with when trains leave in the morning,” Milton transit coordinator Tony D’Alessandro told NRU. “From a Milton Transit perspective, we cannot connect to every train because of that without increasing our service significantly.”

The evening drop-off service accommodates changing arrival times by placing three buses at the GO station that each service a different zone. When riders board a bus they tell the operator their destination and the operator will devise a route that will serve them all. The challenge has been to provide a comparable service in the morning.

To address the morning service gap, Milton Transit ran the GO Connect pilot in collaboration with Metrolinx and RideCo, an application that facilitates shared rides, from April 2015 to 2016. During the pilot residents could arrange trips to and from the GO Station online. The service used local taxis equipped with a mobile app that would adjust routes based on the residents’ addresses, construction and traffic.

“It was a technology-enabled solution to really identify the location of individuals so that they could be picked up and delivered to a destination without significantly increasing Milton Transit service levels,” said D’Alessandro.

Residents responded positively to the pilot. D’Alessandro said Metrolinx customer surveys showed most people using the service were repeat users.

The pilot allowed Milton Transit and Metrolinx to study whether or not an alternative service delivery model could connect residents to higher-order transit, while potentially eliminating the use of personal vehicles for the first and last mile.

Applications such as RideCo collect data about user behaviour. Ditta says there are a lot of opportunities to use this type of data to inform decisions about where public transit service is provided and how frequently it runs. The Mowat Centre report suggests governments should require consistent forms of data-sharing through the regulation of shared mobility providers.

Given the geographical size of the GTHA, Ditta says that taking a regional approach to shared mobility could make it easier for residents to travel across municipal boundaries.

“If municipalities adopt, for example, conflicting regulations it could inhibit the development of a broader regional transportation system,” said Ditta. She noted that having an overarching framework that allows municipalities the flexibility to tailor services to their local needs would reduce fragmentation of transit service across the GTHA. It would allow users to connect seamlessly from one mode of transportation to another. Smooth connections, as well as travel times and costs comparable to personal car use, is essential to encouraging the use of shared mobility options.