“Impacts of Ride-Hailing and Future Mobility” with Alejandro Henao

Abstract

A number of disruptive mobility services are redefining passenger travel. Ride-hailing companies (such as Uber, and Lyft) are one such service that gained rapid market share in the past few years and have a notable impact across multiple domains such as vehicle miles traveled, parking, safety, and energy use. Furthermore, ride-hailing represents the early onset of mobility as a service (MaaS) in which transportation is ordered, purchased, and consumed at the point of need, rather than as a small portion of an ongoing monthly budget. MaaS not only impacts the traveler and network, but there are also significant impacts in terms of the built environment, future infrastructure (e.g. parking, curb utilization), fleet management, regulations, and key social, economic, and energy implications.

Although ride-hailing has gained rapid popularity, data and research that can inform impacts on mobility and energy remains scarce. There is a critical knowledge gap in analyzing the conditions that can drive various emerging mobility services towards societal goals. This study aims to address this gap by developing a framework to explore the energy impacts of MaaS that span key research questions, hypotheses, data needs, and data collection strategies. The comprehensive framework proposed is intended to guide the future (re)design of integrated mobility systems, harnessing new technologies and services to help align public and private co-benefits, while also addressing critical potential risks and unintended consequences.

Alejandro Henao: Dr. Henao is a postdoctoral transportation researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Deputy Director for Mobility Choice. His research focuses on the synergies between transportation and energy, with an emphasis on data collection strategies and innovation to answer key research questions including impacts of ride-hailing and future mobility. He holds a PhD from the interdisciplinary sustainable urban infrastructure program at the University of Colorado. Realizing the difficulty in obtaining data directly from Uber and Lyft, he designed an ethnographic and survey-based experiment by conducting research while driving for both companies. Dr. Henao has experience in teaching, mentoring, and research collaboration. He is interested and motivated in research and work that leads to the creation of better places including emerging mobility innovations, energy savings, mode choice, transit use, car-dependency reduction, safety, and equity.