News

Dr. Circella Elected Member of the Board of the International Association of Travel Behaviour Research.

The International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR) is an international organization of scholars, researchers, practitioners, consultants, and public agency professionals dedicated to the advancement of travel behaviour research.  The organization aims to serve as a forum that brings together professionals from a wide range of disciplines interested in the study of the factors that influence activity and travel choices of people and businesses, the formulation of new computational and analytical modeling methods and approaches for forecasting activity-travel demand

Long Live Batteries

EV challenges remain but battery life is not one of them. There are lots of great reasons to drive electric. The modern plug-in electric vehicle (EV) is quiet, saves on fuel costs, requires little maintenance, and comes with thousands of dollars in purchase incentives. Downsides still exist, though.

Automated Shuttle Comes to UC Davis West Village

This electric, automated shuttle from SAIC Innovation Center is looping around UC Davis West Village now until June. Through June 1, San Jose-based Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation’s (SAIC) Innovation Center is demonstrating its automated, all-electric shuttle around a defined loop of the solar-panel-lined West Village community as part of an agreement between the auto company and UC Davis. 

Uber and Lyft Increased Traffic Delays in San Francisco by 40 percent

Uber and Lyft increased traffic delays in San Francisco by 40 percent

By Chelsea Whyte

Uber and Lyft drivers are on strike to demand regulated fares and livable wages, in the lead-up to Uber’s initial public offering on the stock exchange on 10 May. Now there is some more bad news for these services: they haven’t lived up to claims of reducing traffic congestion.

New Paper Published in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies: What drives the use of ridehailing in California?

Emerging Technologies: What drives the use of ridehailing in California? Ordered probit models of the usage frequency of Uber and Lyft by Farzad Alemi, Giovanni Circella, Patricia Mokhtarian, and Susan Handy Abstract

The availability of ridehailing services, such as those provided by Uberand Lyft in the U.S. market, as well as the share of trips made by these services, are continuously growing. Yet, the factors affecting the frequency of use of these services are not well understood.