What stay-at-home orders reveal about dependence on transportation network companies

Transportation Network Companies (TNC) such as Uber and Lyft set out to provide transportation not fulfilled by private vehicles or public transit. The social value of TNCs for essential trips (i.e., necessary trips that cannot be fulfilled by another mode of transportation) is difficult to discern in normal conditions. The COVID-19 stay-at-home order is used as a natural experiment to investigate the heterogeneous ability to avoid TNCs by income areas of trip origins. We measure the sensitivity of different populations’ ability to respond to policies and to avoid TNC trips (e.g., early stay-at-home orders) using a difference-in-difference style regression. Previous studies have indicated that under normal conditions TNCs primarily serve high-income areas, indicating that TNCs may not be improving transportation equity but instead serve as an additional mode of transportation for passengers with multiple options. We fill a gap in the literature by evaluating the role TNCs play in serving unavoidable and essential trips. We find that high-income community areas showed greater sensitivity to the stay-at-home order with a 56% greater decrease in TNC ridership during the stay-at-home order compared to low-income community areas. Specifically, TNC trips from high-income areas decreased by 80%. This indicates that although riders from high-income community areas might make up the majority of trips in normal conditions, low-income community areas are less able to adapt to stay-at-home orders because of a higher degree of non-flexible and essential jobs or less access to TNC alternatives like private vehicles and public transit.