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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (8 results)

  • Article
Policy Briefs (2022)

People who live in rural areas in California face unique transportation challenges due to long travel distances, infrequent transit service, the cost of car ownership, and limited access to app-based rideshare services that are common in more populated urban centers. Over the past eight years, UC Davis has partnered with the eight San Joaquin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organizations to identify and support development of three innovative mobility pilot concepts for the region.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis evaluated these three pilot programs using survey and service usage data collected from their launch dates in 2019 and 2020 through November 2021 to understand the participant characteristics and outcomes of each pilot. This policy brief summarizes the key findings from that research.

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    Cover page: Evaluating Pilot Approaches to Increase Rural Mobility
    • Article
    Research Reports (2022)

    In rural areas, cost-effective transit service is challenging due to greater travel distances, lower population densities, and longer travel times than in cities. As a result, the people who rely on public transit contend with infrequent and slow service, and keeping a sufficient number of personal vehicles in reliable working order can be prohibitively expensive for low-income families. UC Davis partnered with the eight San Joaquin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organizations to identify and support development of three innovative mobility pilot concepts for the region. The first pilot is an electric vehicle (EV) carsharing service known as Míocar, located in affordable housing complexes in eight rural communities in Tulare and Kern counties. The second is a volunteer ridesharing service, known as VOGO, which supplements existing transit services in transport-disadvantaged rural areas in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. The third is a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform that allows planning and payment for fixed and demand-responsive transit services, including VOGO, in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. These pilots seek to (a) provide improved access to destinations for individuals with limited transportation alternatives, (b) and achieve greenhouse gas reductions through mode shifts from traditional internal combustion vehicles to EVs, ridesharing, and fixed transit. This report presents the methods and results for “before” and “after” evaluations conducted by UC Davis researchers to assess the performance and impacts of each pilot. The evaluations incorporate service usage data including telematics and MaaS application data, and survey data collected from pilot participants, to assess the programs beginning with pilot launch (2019 and2020) until November 2021. The results provide insights into participant characteristics and barriers to transportation, travel behavior, trip planning activities, and the extent to which the pilots addressed the travel needs of their target populations region.

    View the NCST Project Webpage

      Cover page: A Before and After Evaluation of Shared Mobility Projects in the San Joaquin Valley
      • Article
      ITS reports (2021)
      In rural areas, cost-effective transit service is challenging to provide due to greater travel distances, lower population densities, and longer travel times than in cities. The people who rely on public transit contend with infrequent and slow service. Access to a personal car is often essential to the quality of life for most residents, enabling them to more easily access work, health care, education, healthy food, and other essential services. However, keeping two (or sometimes even one) car in reliable working order can consume an estimated 22% to 56% of the household budget for low-income families in California. Rural residents often have lower incomes than their urban counterparts, and the most fuel-efficient vehicles, particularly electric vehicles (EVs), are often outside their financial reach. An EV carsharing pilot, called Míocar, was launched in August 2019 to explore the potential of a shared mobility service to offer a cost-effective mobility option for residents of rural disadvantaged communities and to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Affordable housing complexes host the round-trip EV carsharing hubs in southern San Joaquin Valley (CA) communities with low levels of intercity transit service and personal vehicles. The goals of the pilot program are (a) to provide carsharing at a price point that is more affordable than owning a personal vehicle to price-sensitive populations with low transit access; and (b) to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This report summarizes the data collected during the 10-month operational rampup of the Míocar service—the entire dataset links members and their service use data with results from member and post reservation surveys. The results provide initial insights into who, how, and why members are using Míocar.
        Cover page: Early Results from an Electric Vehicle Carsharing Service in Rural Disadvantaged Communities in the San Joaquin Valley
        • Article
        ITS reports (2022)
        Rural areas in California present unique transportation challenges associated with long travel distances, infrequent transit service, the cost of car ownership, and limited access to app-based rideshare services that are common to more populated urban centers. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, partnered with the eight San Joaquin Valley Metropolitan Planning Organizations to identify and support the development of innovative regional mobility pilot concepts, including an electric vehicle carsharing service known as Míocar. Míocar launched in August 2019 with roundtrip EV carsharing hubs in affordable housing complexes in the southern San Joaquin Valley. This study summarizes the data collected through a telephone survey with current Míocar users from January 2022 through March 2022. The survey asks users to reflect on their use of the service since they enrolled, and it builds upon past data collection efforts for this program by gathering detailed information on member characteristics, transportation needs and capabilities, and Míocar’s role as a transportation option for the users’ households. The results provide qualitative insights into members’ mobility challenges and considerations and the service’s impacts on user travel. Comparisons to existing carsharing programs suggest that Míocar is achieving similar impacts as other programs in some areas, such as reducing personal vehicle use, ownership, and associated greenhouse gas emissions. However, respondents emphasize its role in improving mobility within the rural region. The evaluation provides information for researchers to enhance future evaluations of rural carsharing, and findings may inform member recruitment, training, program design, and other efforts conducted by rural carsharing operators.
          Cover page: Retrospective User Survey for a Rural Electric Vehicle Carsharing Pilot in California’s Central Valley
          • Article
          ITS reports (2022)
          Pilot programs have been implemented in cities across the U.S. to address the first- and last- mile problem with door-to-door shared microtransit, ridehailing companies, and shared-ride operators with dynamic pick-up locations. The City of Rancho Cordova and Lyft partnered to launch one such pilot in the form of a discount-based door-to-door (D2D) coupon program named “Free ＄5 to Ride”. The program offers ＄5 credits to Lyft riders who start or end their trips at one of four Sacramento Regional Transit District (SacRT) light rail stations. The program was designed to reduce rider dependence on personal vehicles and increase the overall convenience of transit use in the region. UC Davis researchers conducted an evaluation of the “Free ＄5 to Ride” program during its operational period of May 2019 through June 2021. Researchers developed a participant survey and used survey data along with participant trip data, ridership data for the SacRT light rail, and ridership data for the Rancho CordoVan shuttle service to characterize the outcomes of the pilot program. The evaluation shows that the coupon program was generally well-received. Participation levels increased dramatically by early 2020, and while trip activity dropped at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, program activity remained fairly constant through the end of the program. Researchers encountered survey sampling limitations due to ridehailing customer engagement policies, suggesting that future evaluations of similar programs would benefit from increased data access, or modified policies allowing operators to conduct more extensive outreach in support of these studies.
            Cover page: Results of Rancho Cordova “Free ＄5 to Ride” Ridehailing Discount Coupon Program
            • Article
            Research Reports (2022)
              Cover page: The Central Valley Initiative
              • Article
              Policy Briefs (2024)
              The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 sparked conversations about how to best avoid large waves of airborne infections. A solution could save lives and avert an overwhelmed hospital system. Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) may be implemented early-on to reduce infections before pharmaceutical interventions such as vaccines are available. This study evaluated the effectiveness of NPIs including cloth masks, N95 masks, antigen testing, and reductions in contact intensities. It also compared the effectiveness of interventions implemented during all activities to only high-risk work activities.
                Cover page: Preparing for Future Airborne Pandemics: Lessons Learned from a Los Angeles Travel Case Study
                • Article
                ITS reports (2023)
                This study used a simulation to examine nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) that could have been implemented early in a COVID-19 surge to avoid a large wave of infections, deaths, and an overwhelmed hospital system. The authors integrated a dynamic agent-based travel model with an infection dynamic model. Both models were developed with and calibrated to local data from Los Angeles County (LAC), resulting in a synthetic population of 10 million agents with detailed socio-economic and activity-based characteristics representative of the County’s population. The study focused on the time of the second wave of COVID-19 in LAC (November 1, 2020, to February 10, 2021), before vaccines were introduced. The model accounted for mandated and self-imposed interventions at the time, by incorporating mobile device data providing observed reductions in activity patterns from pre-pandemic norm, and it represented multiple employment categories with literature-informed contact distributions. The combination of NPIs—such as masks, antigen testing, and reduced contact intensity—were the most effective, among the least restrictive, means to reduce infections. The findings may be relevant to public health policy interventions in the community and at the workplace. The study demonstrates that investments in activity-based travel models, including detailedindividual-level socio-demographic characteristics and activity behaviors, can facilitate the evaluation of NPIs to reduce infectious disease epidemics, including COVID-19. The framework developed is generalizable across SARS-COV-2 variants, or even other viral infections, with minimal modifications to the modeling infrastructure.
                  Cover page: Effectiveness of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Avert the Second COVID-19 Surge in Los Angeles County: A Simulation Study
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