Developing and Evaluating Intermodal E-Sharing Services–A Multi-method Approach

Different studies assume that travel behavior and mobility patterns of people may change within the next years: multimodal and intermodal usage of transport modes are getting more and more important. We expect a great potential for sharing services especially on intermodal trips. We aim at developing and evaluating intermodal electric mobility management concepts from the customer perspective. Since conventional approaches and singular methods are not appropriate, we adopted a multi-method approach consisting of five parts: (1) supply concepts are developed, (2) vehicle requirements for intermodal sharing are identified, (3) intermodal trip information is collected, (4) an agent based model and a macroscopic demand model are developed further in order to represent intermodal trips and e-vehicles and to evaluate several supply concepts, and (5) the impact and acceptance of modern and flexible mobility services like carsharing, bikesharing or new electric vehicle concepts (e.g. segways or light cars) is assessed and evaluated. The proposed methodology can be used for the development of customer oriented and attractive intermodal sharing services. Hence, the model results are essential for the evaluation and economic appraisal of e-sharing services from the supplier perspective. The proposed methodology can be applied to other cities and regions.