Shared Use Travel Behavior for Improving Rural Mobility: Insights from Greene County, Pennsylvania

Abstract

Rural communities are considered disadvantaged communities as they suffer from a lack of transport options. Thus, rural regions provide less accessibility for commuters to reach their destination as opposed to urban regions. However, the issues of transport disadvantage and shared use mobility in rural areas within the United States (US) have not been well investigated. Furthermore, transport disadvantage differs between communities and regions across the globe; thus, there is a need to study the behavioral choices of rural commuters within the US context. This study contributes by analyzing the behavioral choices of rural communities within the US through a case study site of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, for adopting a shared use shuttle service. K-means clusters showed that trips from the survey data were a good representation of real trips from Ecolane. Furthermore, random parameter-based binary logit models were calibrated using data collected from students, faculty, and residents in Waynesburg, Greene County, to study the behavioral choices of commuters. The findings for the faculty and students group revealed that prior experience with shared services increases the likelihood of using a shared shuttle. An important personal characteristic of inconvenience showed a higher propensity toward using existing modes as opposed to a shared shuttle. Such commuters value personal vehicles as more convenient as they have childcare responsibilities and varying schedules for work that require them to move back and forth across locations, thus making a shared shuttle less attractive for them. The socioeconomic factors of age and gender show a higher propensity for using shared shuttles. The findings from this study could be helpful for agencies in improving rural mobility and considering such shared mobility services for rural communities.