Shared Mobility Solutions to Transportation Needs for Rural Americans

Project Summary (PS)/Abstract. Many rural communities are represented by generational poverty racial divisions inequities and inadequate infrastructure. Americans in those distressed communities lack access to quality education healthcare and employment opportunities exacerbated by transportation access. Conventional public rural transit services and market-driven rideshare companies have left transportation access deserts in those distressed communities. New Global Systems (NGS) proposes to research and develop an innovative system to operate and manage shared mobility solutions to meet the above transportation access needs. We propose an innovative dial a ride with dynamic stop or a dynamic hub-and-spoke model with trip costs as an objective function augmented with a rolling horizon solution based algorithm to constantly optimize trips requested in real-time. In addition innovative financial mechanisms will be explored including charge and payment to make shared mobility sustainable in rural communities. The proposed solution provides transportation access for rural communities especially in distressed counties such as where the R&D will be performed in Mississippi. The conservative estimation of a 0.0125 market penetration rate will generate a benefit-to-cost ratio (or B/C) of 4:1 and a social B/C of 32:1. The proposal directly supports USDA's SBIR research priorities g j and k under Rural and Community Development-Topic Area 8.6. The service will directly provide about 300 jobs for those areas. Transportation access will incentivize rural community's social and economic development including the extreme poverty areas like the Mississippi Delta where a case study will be supported and conducted with a local transit agency.