Shared Transport Systems: International ABC



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    The hundred varieties of xTransit

    This concept of "shared transport", as opposed to private vehicles privately used, or traditional public transport, has been around, mainly in earlier and far more artisanal forms, for many years and is known in different places by many different names. You can go out on the street this morning and find it in Asia, Africa, Europe, America, North and South, the Near and Middle East, and Oceana. It is, you might say, a very natural form of transportation.

    Here is a list that we put before you for your comments, additions, corrections. As you will see, taken in the first degree it is a very wide catch-all phrase. That is as it should be since it is an accurate reflection of what you get when you start to look around for "third ways" that people can get around in cities.

    Access and use of xTransit or paratransit systems is open to either the general public for a price, or in other systems to a defined user group or club. Access may be either parallel of serial. In the former case (the most common until now) users "hail" and board the shared vehicle at more or less the same time. Typically a group of unaffiliated people taking a share taxi or small bus system. In the latter case, the sharing occurs in serial: that is, one person uses the vehicles, completes the journey, and that it becomes available for a different user. This is the case of carsharing and bike sharing.

    To the extent that under the New Mobility Agenda the role of paratransit is one that we feel worth further exploring, improving and expanding, both kinds of access present environmental and other potential socioeconomic advantages. Even in the case of carsharing, which on the surface may seem to be nothing more than yet one more car roaming the street, the fact is that they have more subtle effects, since for example people who carshare (or bikeshare) also tend to be more likely to be users of public transport, cycles and walking (and taxis, shared and not). Thus a single carshare vehicle replaces on average anywhere from 8-15 self-owned cars, and at the same time decreases the requirement for parking space proportionately.

    The specific focus of the Smart ParaTransit program, a major 2008/9 goal of the New Mobility Agenda and the Livable Streets Network's joint project, is of course more specifically focused: targeting different forms of vehicles or ridesharing that are informed and mediated by 21st century information and communications technologies (ICT). Nonetheless it is instructive to be aware of the long history and very wide geographic spread of this very simple and very useful concept. There is much to be learned from knowing the past.

    1. Airport limousine
    2. Aktalita
    3. Bicycles sharing
    4. Black taxi (not London)
    5. Buseta
    6. Buspools
    7. Busstaxi
    8. Call-a-bus
    9. Carros Públicos
    10. Carpools
    11. Carsharing
    12. Casual carpools
    13. CHARM (Computer Helped Area-wide Rural Mobility)
    14. City bikes
    15. Club buses
    16. Colectivos
    17. Combi
    18. Commercial vans
    19. Community bicyles
    20. Commuter vans
    21. Cycle rickshaw
    22. Demand responsive transport
    23. Dial a ride
    24. Dial a bus
    25. Digital hitchhiking
    26. Dollar van
    27. Dolmus
    28. DRT
    29. Dynamic Carpooling
    30. Dynamic Ridesharing"
    31. Färdtjänst
    32. Flexible carpooling
    33. FlexLinjen
    34. FTS - Flexible transport services
    35. FUT (Flexible Urban Transport)
    36. GoLoco
    37. Hail & Ride
    38. Hitchhiking
    39. Jeepney
    40. Jitneys
    41. Lift-share
    42. Line Taxi
    43. Louage
    44. Marshrutka
    45. Maxi-cabs
    46. Maxi-taxi
    47. Minibus
    48. Minibus-taxi
    49. Multi-employer vanpools
    50. Nacht-AST
    51. Paratransit
    52. Para-transit
    53. PBS - Public bicycle systems
    54. Pedicabs
    55. Pesero
    56. Por Puesto
    57. Public light bus
    58. Public transport feeder systems
    59. Publicos,
    60. Regio-Taxis
    61. ReTax
    62. Rickshaws (or rickshas)
    63. Ridematching
    64. Ride-sharing
    65. RufBus
    66. Sammeltaxi
    67. Service taxi
    68. Shared ride airport taxi
    69. Shared ride taxi
    70. Sherut
    71. Slugging
    72. Sluglines
    73. Smart ParaTransit
    74. Smart Traveler
    75. SPT
    76. Subscription bus
    77. Taxi
    78. Taxi brousse
    79. Taxi collectif
    80. Teksi
    81. Telebus
    82. Trishaw
    83. Vanpooling
    84. Virtual line taxis
    85. xTransit

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