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Not All Ride-hailing Trips are Created Equal: An Examination of Additional Trips Enabled by Ride-hailing and the Users Who Made Them - Ride-hailing services, such as those offered by Uber and Lyft, have the potential to produce both benefits and negative externalities. For example, ride-hailing can help improve the mobility and accessibility of users by providing on-demand access to both a vehicle and driver. However, ride-hailing can also induce additional travel and contribute to increases in vehicle-miles traveled (VMT), which can worsen congestion and emissions. Induced ride-hailing trips (i.e., trips that would not have been made if ride-hailing was not available) represent somewhat of a middle ground between benefits and negative externalities. On the one hand, the existence of these trips suggests that ride-hailing allows certain users to make trips that they would not (or could not) make otherwise. On the other hand, induced ride-hailing trips contribute to increases in VMT.
Despite the significant effort that has been dedicated to understanding ride-hailing use, most studies simply report the percentage of trips that were classified as induced. Consequently, relatively little is known about induced ride-hailing trips or those who make these trips. This study uses data from a smartphone-based survey conducted in three metropolitan areas in California to gain insights into the attributes of induced ride-hailing trips and those who made said trips. The data was collected from November 2018 to November 2019 and includes information on all trips made by the respondents over the course of 6 to 7 consecutive days. Hypothesis testing is applied to compare the attributes of induced and non-induced trips and the attributes of those who did and did not record induced trip(s) during the survey period. Additionally, binary logistic regression is used to explore the influence of socio-demographic characteristics and built environment attributes on the probability of an individual recording an induced trip during the survey period. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has examined the both attributes of induced ride-hailing trips and those who made said trips.
The results suggest that members of communities that have traditionally experienced transportation disadvantage were more likely to have recorded an induced trip. Specifically, individuals with disabilities, those from lower-income households, and individuals from zero-vehicle households were more likely to have recorded an induced trip. Moreover, trips corresponding to maintenance and discretionary activities were more likely to be induced compared to trips corresponding to other activities. Overall, the results highlight the potential for ride-hailing to improve the mobility and accessibility of certain users and suggest that on-demand transit services could have a similar impact. However, an important caveat is that the lack of wheelchair-accessible vehicles can limit the extent to which the mobility and accessibility of those with disabilities can be improved by ride-hailing. Consequently, policymakers and ride-hailing companies should explore options to increase the number of wheelchair accessible vehicles that are included in ride-hailing fleets, such as subsidizing the purchase of said vehicles and partnering with taxi companies. The results of this study can help inform efforts to improve mobility and accessibility of disadvantaged groups, such as universal basic mobility programs, on-demand transit services, and paratransit services.
