About Susan Shaheen and Adam Cohen

Susan Shaheen is a pioneer and internationally recognized expert in shared mobility. She is also actively involved in researching automated vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles. She is an adjunct professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California (UC), Berkeley.

Adam Cohen is a shared mobility researcher at TSRC, UC Berkeley. Since joining the group in 2004, his research has focused on innovative urban mobility solutions, including shared mobility, Smart Cities technologies, smartphone apps, and other emerging technologies.

Managing the Transition to Shared Automated Vehicles: Building Today While Designing for Tomorrow

To plan for the transition to automated vehicles, cities and county governments should develop building and zoning codes that not only accommodate adaptable parking but encourage it by design. This can include amending building codes to require infrastructure that makes transforming garages into inhabitable buildings possible. As automated vehicles begin to enter the marketplace, cities should consider incentives and other programs to begin the conversion of ground level parking to commercial uses.

Big Data, Automation, and the Future of Transportation

In recent years, a variety of forces (economic, environmental, and social) have quickly given rise to “shared mobility,” a collective of entrepreneurs and consumers leveraging technology to share transportation resources, save money, and generate capital. Bikesharing services, such as BCycle, and business-to-consumer carsharing services, such as Zipcar, have become part of a sociodemographic trend that has pushed shared mobility from the fringe to the mainstream. The role of shared mobility in the broader landscape of urban mobility has become a frequent topic of discussion. Shared transportation modes—such as bikesharing, carsharing, ridesharing, ridesourcing/transportation network companies (TNCs), and microtransit—are changing how people travel and are having a transformative effect on smart cities.