Aim: Ride-sharing is an innovative on-demand transport service that aims to promote sustainable transport, reduce car utilization, increase vehicle occupancy and public transport ridership. By reviewing ride-sharing studies around the world, this paper aims to map major aspects of ride-sharing, including online platforms, user factors and barriers that affect ride-sharing services, and extract useful insights regarding their successful implementation. Method: A systematic literature review is conducted on scientific publications in English language. Articles are eligible if they report a study on user factors affecting ride-sharing use and/or barriers preventing ride-sharing implementation; ride-sharing online platforms in these articles are also recorded and are further explored through their official websites. A database is built that organizes articles per author, year and location, summarizes online platform attributes, and groups user factors associated with the likelihood to ride-share. Findings: The review shows that the term “ride-sharing” is used in the literature for both profit and non-profit ride-sharing services. In total, twenty-nine ride-sharing online platforms are recorded and analyzed according to specific characteristics. Sixteen user factors related to the likelihood to ride-share are recorded and grouped into sociodemographic, location and system factors. While location and system factors are found to follow a pattern among studies, mixed findings are recorded on the relationship between sociodemographic factors and ride-sharing. Factors that may hinder the development of ride-sharing systems are grouped into economic, technological, business, behavioral and regulatory barriers. Conclusion: Opportunities exist to improve the quality of existing ride-sharing services and plan successful new ones. Future research efforts should focus towards studying ride-sharing users' trip purpose (i.e., work, university, shopping, etc.), investigating factors associated to ride-sharing before and after implementation of the service, and perform cross-case studies between cities and countries of the same continent to compare findings.

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is an innovative mobility service that aims to redesign the future of urban mobility by integrating multi-modal transportation and app-based technologies to enable seamless urban mobility. While MaaS pilot demonstrations and schemes implementation have taken place in different cities at a global level, and relevant studies focus on the MaaS barriers and users’ characteristics, the planning process for implementing MaaS is rarely presented. This paper summarizes the services to be integrated into the MaaS Athens’ demo site in Greece and describes the planning process that was followed to showcase the demo. The demo site is located within the urban area of Athens, including a public transport operator, a bike-sharing service, a taxi operator, and a municipality public transport operator. The demonstration runs developments in a real corridor that has the potential to prepare the MaaS eco-system deployment and market uptake. Three travel cases are planned: (1) Multimodal work trip; (2) MaaS for tourists; and (3) Interurban/urban interfaces, for work and shopping/leisure trips. The user journeys are defined in detail and the main information for each user journey is presented. The study concludes with challenges that were faced during the demo planning and recommendations for achieving the MaaS goals.

The hyperloop is an innovative land transport mode for passengers and freight that travels at ultra-high speeds. Lately, different stakeholders have been engaged in the research and development of hyperloop components. The novelty of the hyperloop necessitates certain directions to be followed toward the development and testing of its technological components as well the formation of regulations and planning processes. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive literature review of hyperloop publications to record the current state of progress of hyperloop components, including the pod, the infrastructure, and the communication system, and identify involved EU stakeholders. Blending this information results in future directions. An online search of English-based publications was performed to finally consider 107 studies on the hyperloop and identify 81 stakeholders in the EU. The analysis shows that the hyperloop-related activities are almost equally distributed between Europe (39%) and Asia (38%), and the majority of EU stakeholders are located in Spain (26%) and Germany (20%), work on the traction of the pod (37%) and the tube (28%), and study impacts including safety (35%), energy (33%), and cost (30%). Existing tube systems and testing facilities for the hyperloop lack full-scale tracks, which creates a hurdle for the testing and development of the hyperloop system. The presented analysis and findings provide a holistic assessment of the hyperloop system and its stakeholders and suggest future directions to develop a successful transport system.

Several studies have focused on understanding travelers’ attitudes and characteristics toward using carpooling services. However, few of these studies have focused the driver’s behavior and carpooling services that are organized to feed public transport. This research investigates the willingness of drivers to accept a carpooling ride, as part of their trip, to/from public transport stations (i.e., rail, tram and metro). Data from the EU project Ride2Rail are used, for which a survey (n = 327) was conducted in EU27 and the UK. Fisher’s exact and chi-square tests are used to explore the relationships between drivers/non-drivers and explanatory variables. A binary logit model is developed to estimate the likelihood of carpooling as a driver to/from a public transport station. The results show that delay, convenience, residence location, security and the number of passengers influence the drivers’ decision toward using their private vehicle in carpooling services. Findings provide concrete recommendations for carpooling drivers regarding the planning of a successful carpooling service. The recommendations to “recruit” the drivers become significant, as the concept of carpooling cannot be realized without them.

Europe is an extremely ferry-intensive area, with two main markets – the Northern Europe and the Baltic, and the Mediterranean; while EU ferries account for 35% of the world fleet. This research presents the E-ferry, the first pure electric ferry for medium range routes and likely the largest battery pack ever installed in an electric vessel, and evaluates its economic performance compared to an electric-diesel and a diesel vessel. Three E-ferry schemes are used in the evaluation: E-ferry prototype, E-ferry prototype excluding the development costs, and Series 3 E-ferry, for which we assume an increased production level. The evaluation focuses on the construction and operation costs of the vessels by utilizing real-world data that were collected during the evaluation period of the E-ferry, and complemented with data provided by the ferry operator. The evaluation shows that while the E-ferry construction cost is higher compared to the other two technologies, it contributes significantly to energy demand reduction. The E-ferry achieves cost parity with the diesel-based engine vessels between 5.2 and 3.6 years when considering different E-ferry and energy schemes, showing the potential to promote sustainable ferry operations in short and medium range ferry connections.

Multimodal traveling is expected to enhance mobility for users, reduce inequalities of car ownership, and reduce emissions. In the same context, ride-sharing aims to minimize negative impacts related to emissions, reduce travel costs and congestion, increase passenger vehicle occupancy, and increase public transit ridership when planned for first/last-mile trips. This study uses the empirical data gained from the pilot study in Athens, Greece, to outline a step-by-step planning guide for setting up a pilot study, and it concludes with challenges that emerged during and after its implementation. The demo aims to enhance the connection of low-density regions to public transport (PT) modes, specifically to the metro, through the provision of demand-responsive ride-sharing services. During the demo period, two different applications were utilized: the “Travel Companion” app and the “Driver Companion” app, which refer to passengers and drivers of the ride-sharing service, respectively. Demo participants were identified through a Stated Preference (SP) experiment. Challenges that were faced during the implementation show that although participants are willing to try new mobility solutions, the readiness and reliability of the new service are essential attributes in maintaining existing users and engaging new ones.