Several cities have begun to integrate shared-use mobility options into their transportation policies. The extent to which this integration is occurring, however, varies significantly by city and by mode.

One common example of cities crafting a policy that addressed shared-use mobility started with determining parking or docking locations for carshare and bikeshare. For carshare operators such as Zipcar—in which the “home” location of the vehicles is fixed—many cities have adopted policies that assign surface or lot parking spaces to shared-use vehicles, diminishing the necessity to provide a personal parking spot for every municipal employee. Cambridge, Massachusetts has taken steps to integrate policies supportive of carsharing into its zoning and parking ordinances governing land uses. In June 2015, the Cambridge Planning Board recommended adoption of a City Council zoning petition that would set aside spaces for shared vehicles in municipal lots near commercial districts. This innovation, though small, has proven critical to the success of such carshare operations. The recent proliferation of one-way carshare has prompted a new accommodation in some cities: shared vehicles are exempted from zone-based parking restrictions and can use metered spots for a fixed fee paid for by the operator.

As carshare established a foothold as a viable transportation option, some transit agencies went a step further to ensure shared-use options mesh with traditional transit service. In Washington, DC, the regional transit operator WMATA, recently announced a partnership with Enterprise Carshare to provide shared-use vehicles at 125 WMATA-owned parking spaces adjacent to 45 Metrorail stations.  Per the terms of the contract, Enterprise will compensate WMATA for the parking-fee revenue lost as a result of the reduction in publicly available spaces.  In the Boston area, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority now designs new stations with spaces marked for shared vehicles.

Urban bikeshare systems have also been designed to complement traditional transit service. Due to relatively low operating costs and the minimal infrastructure needed, bikeshare serves as an excellent first/last-mile service. A 2014 customer survey of Capital Bikeshare, the Washington, DC area system, found Metrorail stations to be an origin or destination for 64 percent of riders in the previous month. Similarly, a survey of Citi Bike in New York found 52 percent of Citi Bike riders combine bikeshare trips with other transportation modes “most of the time.” Seventy-four percent of New York bikeshare docks are within a five-minute walk of a rail station.

Los Angeles, which will launch its bikeshare program in June 2016, is perhaps the boldest in explicitly conceiving of bikeshare as a component of the transit system. The county transit authority, LA Metro, will operate the system and has announced it intends to integrate payment for bikeshare into the same farecard already used on the agency’s trains and buses. (Other major bikeshare systems require an electronic “key” or coded receipt distinct from the local transit farecard.)

There was a widely shared sense that most U.S. transit agencies are not nimble enough to take advantage of the technological advancements that are the foundation of new shared-use options. U.S. transit providers adopt new technologies more slowly than the private sector in spite of the proven viability of technologies such as real-time transit information and on-demand dispatching. In New York, for instance, smartphone users can now view the location of MTA buses in real time, but most subway stations still lack “countdown clocks” that estimate the arrival time of the next train. The agency still requires riders to use magnetic strip-based farecards, a generation-old technology. In Philadelphia, riders still have the option of using tokens. Across the country, outdated procurement processes, inflexible existing contracts, and bureaucratic practices are at the core of this issue. Many agencies understand that they don’t have to be as versatile as a Silicon Valley startup, but they can capitalize on such versatility by coordinating with such companies to enhance transportation service.

To that end, the crucial first step agencies have taken is offering open data to the public and to developers through APIs. In nearly every city with a significant transit presence, smartphone users can take advantage of apps that provide point-to-point routing and, in some cases, real-time train or bus departure information. This is because these transit agencies publish schedule data that uses a universal standard known as General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). The popularity and success of these apps demonstrates the opportunities for greater integration of public transit services and private-sector development capabilities.

For integration of shared-use options to work effectively, interviewees asserted the requirement to have open data must be a two-way street, with shared-use companies providing their internal data to governments and the public. Specifically, origin/destination and consumer data that shared-use companies collect would be valuable to transit agencies to improve service and planning. The extent to which private shared-use companies make data available varies significantly, and the general lack of data about travel behavior from shared-use mobility operators is a major obstacle to potential service integration. Precise questions regarding where or when shared-use services may help or hinder overall mobility policy objectives cannot be answered until more comprehensive data is made available. p>

Public-sector stakeholders do not collaborate to the extent they should, making integration of shared-use mobility difficult. A major barrier identified in our interviews is many transit agencies’ highly traditional perceptions of their role as providers of a particular, fixed kind of transportation service provided by their own employees, rather than as a coordinator or facilitator of mobility from multiple companies and a diverse workforce. City departments of transportation, meanwhile, are primarily concerned with managing street infrastructure with limited involvement in the transportation services that make use of those streets. Regulation of taxis is usually handled by an entirely separate department, with little alignment between their regulation and the goals of the transportation system. Transit providers do occasionally work beyond this narrow definition. Vanpool programs, paratransit, and guaranteed ride home programs are examples of transit agencies coordinating with private providers to offer shared-use services.

The contrast between the two types of labor forces has yet been reconciled. Public transit is a heavily unionized field. In contrast, shared-use mobility workers are rarely organized (with bikeshare workers an exception), and in some cases are considered independent contractors rather than employees of the shared-use provider. In fact, while many transit agency interviewees identified labor issues as a major barrier, they refrained from discussing it in depth. Similarly, shared-use providers sidestep the problem by refusing to classify their workers as full-time employees. No city government has found a way to resolve this fundamental tension. The issue is beyond the scope of this paper, but it deserves further study and its resolution remains vital.