Shared Mobility Optimizer

In the United States, transportation is the leading source of emissions among major industries. This puts pressure on cities to optimize transportation infrastructures to meet decarbonization goals. City planners are required to ingest data from a variety of sources and balance a wide array of priorities ranging from mobility and equality to safety and sustainability. Making decisions for optimal transportation projects that consider such a wide variety of factors is incredibly challenging and time consuming. This project seeks to improve the process for transportation infrastructure planning by developing a tool that empowers city planners to more effectively plan optimal transportation infrastructures through shared mobility projects such as public transportation, carsharing, and micro mobility (scooters, e-bikes, etc). Not only does shared mobility directly reduce emissions and traffic by taking light-duty vehicles off United States highways, but it improves the well-being of Americans by providing efficient, affordable, and clean transportation for low-income communities. The proposed algorithms and models to be developed under Phase 1 of this proposal are capable of digesting data from a wide variety of sources to suggest optimal shared mobility projects that align with the goals of city planners leading to improved mobility, reduced emissions, and greater well-being for Americans. In Phase 1 of this project the core algorithms and models powering this tool will be developed to mitigate risk for the final product. Before implementing the algorithms, extensive stakeholder engagement and Community of Practice will be performed to ensure that the models and algorithms align with community goals. Following these procedures, the core system will be implemented using data available from a variety of sources including the US Census, city specific transportation data (such as the Chicago Transit Authority), publicly available data from data.gov, and more. In addition to reducing emissions, improving mobility, and promoting inclusion, there is a strong commercial avenue for this technology. City planners, independent consulting firms, and other private entities will benefit from the final developed tool. In addition to improving the efficiency of planners, the infrastructure improvements from this project will lead to decreased emissions, increased mobility benefits, and greater inclusivity for communities