November 16, 2017
TNCs and transit: frenemies? Again
Yanbo Ge A report that came out recently by researchers from the University of California Davis looks closely into the relationship between Transportation Network Companies (TNCs, also called ride-hailing services) and transit. The article sheds light on several interesting questions related to vehicle ownership and trip replacement of TNC users. By collecting data in several…
November 15, 2017
Minimum time for an electric Cannonball Run
The advent of the automobile brought an unprecedented level of freedom for Americans: the promise of going anywhere at anytime. To push this ideal to the limits, people have taken this freedom even farther, driving across the country as fast as possible. This exercise is eloquently named the Cannonball Run after Edwin “Cannonball” Baker…
November 13, 2017
Seattle’s Newest Outdoor Activities: Bike Share and Bike Share Trolling
In March Seattle city council voted to remove its bike share program (Pronto) and redirect any proposed funding for future bike shares. At that point I wrote a blog post talking about how Seattle would be the perfect location for a private free float bike share company. I had little expectation that this would happen…
November 6, 2017
Why regulating ride-sourcing fares is risky
Update: Thanks to Harry the Rideshare Guy for pointing me to this paper (also here) by Uber’s Jonathan Hall and Dan Knoepfle, and NYU’s John Horton. The paper addresses the same question covered in this post, albeit in much more depth, and with actual data. The paper finds that the supply of driver labor faced…
October 27, 2017
Sustainability of car2go abandoning smart cars
Carsharing company car2go announced last week that it would be replacing all of its smart cars in Portland with Mercedes-Benz CLA sedans and GLA crossovers. For most of this year, the company has been operating a mixed fleet comprising the CLA, GLA, and smart fortwo, much as they have been doing in Seattle. The switch…
October 18, 2017
Transportation Lessons from a Summer in Suburbia
Over the summer I completed an internship in Washington D.C. working for Toyota North America. I learned a lot, not just about Toyota but also about using mobility services for suburban commuting. While looking for summer housing, I wanted to live close to work in the downtown area. I soon realized this was not going…
October 5, 2017
Limiting freeways to autonomous vehicles is a bad idea (today)
Can a good idea implemented too soon actually be a bad idea? I would say so, if the early implementation imposes costs in return for little benefit. About a year ago I posted about an under-developed proposal from Madrona Venture Group to restrict I-5 between Seattle and Vancouver to autonomous cars only. The Madrona team…
October 3, 2017
Gas anxiety and PHEV charging behavior
Combing an internal combustion engine and an electric powertrain, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) offer the potential to reduce gasoline consumption while retaining the ability to travel long distances with fast and convenient refueling. They are inherently less dependent on recharging infrastructures than battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which can only be powered by electricity. However,…
September 26, 2017
Dockless bike share
A big game changer happened in the bike share community in China in 2016: dock-less bike share (DBS) programs represented by Mobike and Ofo began to quickly gain popularity since first appearing in Shanghai’s urban transportation system in April 2016. Unlike traditional bike-sharing systems such as Citi Bike in New York City and Divvy in…
July 20, 2017
Fear Knot, Global Maritime Trade Industry: These SO2 Levels can be Achieved Schooner than you Think
Where did the shirt you’re wearing come from? If you’re like most Americans, it was probably imported after being produced by a factory in Southeast Asia, which accounted for over 70% of clothing imports to the US in 2013. As relatively low-value items,…
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