**1. Introduction**

Conducting research for the Institute for Sustainable Mobility (a partnership between the Renault Group and ParisTech), we have modelled an array of shared mobility services using different forms of transportation (taxis, shuttles, vehicle hire schemes) arranged in a ring-shaped system [1–3].

For passenger mobility services in urban areas, the ring-shape principle is aimed to combine the axiom of service cycles (like a public transport line) with a broad geographical coverage, assuming that users are willing to walk a certain distance before and after each journey they make on the ring. By keeping the vehicles in service to run along the ring, availability can be optimised and detours avoided, ensuring that every vehicle is genuinely productive. Achieving greater synergy between the ring infrastructure and the vehicle fleet makes it possible to optimise the quality of service in terms of access time and driving time, while also pushing down production costs and thus enabling for affordable fares.

This chapter is aimed to highlight the 'systemic qualities' of shared mobility services adopting a ring format, as well as exploring the conditions required to establish a ring system in urban settlements.

We will first examine recent technological advances in mobility services and mobility-adjacent services, with reference to the fundamental spatial components of transportation: vehicles, stations, lines and networks. We will then demonstrate how a ring system makes it possible to cover a relatively large geographical area while also establishing service cycles for shared vehicles. A simple geographical model will be provided to quantify the geographical potential of demand, with reference to a few examples from France.

• Planning to purchase a product: in this case, a travel itinerary;

• Booking: reservations for public transport, where necessary;

collective transport solutions in comparison with private vehicles).

including fares and for payment and invoicing.

*Towards Shared Mobility Services in Ring Shape DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94410*

disappeared by the end of that autumn!

without (Car2Go, now ShareNow).

Paris region at the end of 2019.

for urban users.

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• Ticketing: both to provide easy information on the commercial conditions

These are mobility-adjacent services which add much value to the travel experience as a whole, a value felt more keenly for public transport trips than car trips. The provision of information, the capacity to search massive databases and the customisation features 'make up for' the dissociation between vehicle and user which is an inherent feature of public transport (a dissociation which is necessary at this higher level of organisation, but which represents a fundamental handicap for

The benefits on the demand side are not limited to these mobility-adjacent services. Operators and innovators have seized upon the opportunities offered by advanced technologies to invent (or reinvent) new mobility services and new vehicles:

• Reinventing the bicycle, with more electric options and 'shared' vehicles in the form of short-term cycle-hire services with designated stations (cf. 'Boris bikes' in London or Velib systems in Paris and elsewhere) or without (i.e. freefloating services such as Jump etc). In Paris, the summer of 2018 saw a rapid proliferation of these free-floating cycle-share services, with each new player adopting a different colour for its fleet of bicycles: almost all of them had

• Scooters have experienced a similar overhaul: modernised, reinforced and equipped with electric motors and batteries, they are also being offered by a variety of free-floating services in big cities. Parisians witnessed a sudden influx of new scooter services in spring 2019, followed by a period of consolidation which left only 3 or 4 companies standing by that autumn.

• Something similar has happened with cars: the renaissance of the electric car in the 2000s was followed in the 2010s by their deployment in urban car-sharing services (short-term rentals where the vehicle must be returned to its point of origin) and free-floating car-sharing services, with stations (Autolib) or

• A similar vehicle sharing system has been developed for electric motorcycles: for example, CityScoot had over 6000 mopeds in circulation in the Greater

Each of these sharing services depends upon a two-sided *digital platform*: a customer interface which handles the commercial operations, while the production

If operators are capable of mobilising a fleet of vehicles and a team of service and maintenance personnel, they may also offer door-to-door services not dissimilar to a classic taxi service: Uber has emerged as the champion of so-called 'ride hailing' services accessed via mobile phone, combining the Booking, Planning and Ticketing functions into an extremely fluid user experience enshrined in a mobile app.

Other platforms offering car-sharing services (e.g. Drivy) or car-pooling, which are thriving for inter-urban travel (Blablacar), are yet to hit upon the magic formula

side centralises the management and optimisation of resources.

Of course, such services still need to be attractive, offering decent quality of service at an affordable price. These factors have been represented in a specific technical and economic model [1–4]. The 'Orbicity' generic model can be tailored to different types of service. The modal models share a four-tier architecture which involves, from bottom up, (i) the physical operations of the service and the laws governing its vehicle flow, (ii) the balance between journey supply and demand, (iii) optimised service management in terms of fleet size and fare price, (iv) the strategic positioning of the service in terms of technologies, conditionally to the applicable regulation regime.

Using this model, we will examine a number of scenarios which incorporate two key analytical dimensions: the generation of technology used and the applicable regulatory framework. We will demonstrate that not only does technological progress considerably expand the scope of possibilities, but also that regulation plays a vital role. It is entirely possible to imagine a shuttle service offering very reasonable fares, and possibly even without public subsidies.
