IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0262496.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond the dichotomy: How ride-hailing competes with and complements public transport

Author

Listed:
  • Oded Cats
  • Rafal Kucharski
  • Santosh Rao Danda
  • Menno Yap

Abstract

Since ride-hailing has become an important travel alternative in many cities worldwide, a fervent debate is underway on whether it competes with or complements public transport services. We use Uber trip data in six cities in the United States and Europe to identify the most attractive public transport alternative for each ride. We then address the following questions: (i) How does ride-hailing travel time and cost compare to the fastest public transport alternative? (ii) What proportion of ride-hailing trips do not have a viable public transport alternative? (iii) How does ride-hailing change overall service accessibility? (iv) What is the relation between demand share and relative competition between the two alternatives? Our findings suggest that the dichotomy—competing with or complementing—is false. Though the vast majority of ride-hailing trips have a viable public transport alternative, between 20% and 40% of them have no viable public transport alternative. The increased service accessibility attributed to the inclusion of ride-hailing is greater in our US cities than in their European counterparts. Demand split is directly related to the relative competitiveness of travel times i.e. when public transport travel times are competitive ride-hailing demand share is low and vice-versa.

Suggested Citation

  • Oded Cats & Rafal Kucharski & Santosh Rao Danda & Menno Yap, 2022. "Beyond the dichotomy: How ride-hailing competes with and complements public transport," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-17, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0262496
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262496
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0262496
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0262496&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0262496?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boisjoly, Geneviève & Grisé, Emily & Maguire, Meadhbh & Veillette, Marie-Pier & Deboosere, Robbin & Berrebi, Emma & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2018. "Invest in the ride: A 14 year longitudinal analysis of the determinants of public transport ridership in 25 North American cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 434-445.
    2. Rémi Louf & Camille Roth & Marc Barthelemy, 2014. "Scaling in Transportation Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-8, July.
    3. El-Geneidy, Ahmed & Levinson, David & Diab, Ehab & Boisjoly, Genevieve & Verbich, David & Loong, Charis, 2016. "The cost of equity: Assessing transit accessibility and social disparity using total travel cost," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 302-316.
    4. Young, Mischa & Farber, Steven, 2019. "The Who, Why, and When of Uber and other Ride-hailing Trips: An Examination of a Large Sample Household Travel Survey," OSF Preprints x7ryj, Center for Open Science.
    5. Malalgoda, Narendra & Lim, Siew Hoon, 2019. "Do transportation network companies reduce public transit use in the U.S.?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 351-372.
    6. Samiul Hasan & Xiaoming Wang & Yong Bing Khoo & Greg Foliente, 2017. "Accessibility and socio-economic development of human settlements," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-16, June.
    7. Hall, Jonathan D. & Palsson, Craig & Price, Joseph, 2018. "Is Uber a substitute or complement for public transit?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 36-50.
    8. Malik, Jai & Bunch, David S. & Handy, Susan & Circella, Giovanni, 2021. "A deeper investigation into the effect of the built environment on the use of ridehailing for non-work travel," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    9. Young, Mischa & Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2020. "Measuring when Uber behaves as a substitute or supplement to transit: An examination of travel-time differences in Toronto," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shixingyue Hu & Yazao Yang, 2024. "Safety of female ride-hailing passengers: Perception and prevention," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-18, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lee, Yongsung & Lee, Bumsoo, 2022. "What’s eating public transit in the United States? Reasons for declining transit ridership in the 2010s," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 126-143.
    2. Zhang, Zhaolin & Zhai, Guocong & Xie, Kun & Xiao, Feng, 2022. "Exploring the nonlinear effects of ridesharing on public transit usage: A case study of San Diego," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    3. Abdelwahab, Bilal & Palm, Matthew & Shalaby, Amer & Farber, Steven, 2021. "Evaluating the equity implications of ridehailing through a multi-modal accessibility framework," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    4. Brown, Anne, 2022. "Not all fees are created equal: Equity implications of ride-hail fee structures and revenues," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 1-10.
    5. Meredith-Karam, Patrick & Kong, Hui & Wang, Shenhao & Zhao, Jinhua, 2021. "The relationship between ridehailing and public transit in Chicago: A comparison before and after COVID-19," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    6. Wenting Li & Amer Shalaby & Khandker Nurul Habib, 2022. "Exploring the correlation between ride-hailing and multimodal transit ridership in toronto," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 765-789, June.
    7. Nejc Geržinič & Niels Oort & Sascha Hoogendoorn-Lanser & Oded Cats & Serge Hoogendoorn, 2023. "Potential of on-demand services for urban travel," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 1289-1321, August.
    8. Barajas, Jesus M. & Brown, Anne, 2021. "Not minding the gap: Does ride-hailing serve transit deserts?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    9. Brown, Anne, 2021. "Not All Fees are Created Equal: Equity Implications of Ride-hail Fee Structures," OSF Preprints cpsqu, Center for Open Science.
    10. Soria, Jason & Stathopoulos, Amanda, 2021. "Investigating socio-spatial differences between solo ridehailing and pooled rides in diverse communities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    11. Ngo, Nicole S. & Götschi, Thomas & Clark, Benjamin Y., 2021. "The effects of ride-hailing services on bus ridership in a medium-sized urban area using micro-level data: Evidence from the Lane Transit District," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 44-53.
    12. Zou, Zhenpeng & Cirillo, Cinzia, 2021. "Does ridesourcing impact driving decisions: A survey weighted regression analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 1-12.
    13. Zgheib, Najib & Abou-Zeid, Maya & Kaysi, Isam, 2020. "Modeling demand for ridesourcing as feeder for high capacity mass transit systems with an application to the planned Beirut BRT," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 70-91.
    14. Weckström, Christoffer & Mladenović, Miloš N. & Kujala, Rainer & Saramäki, Jari, 2021. "Navigability assessment of large-scale redesigns in nine public transport networks: Open timetable data approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 212-229.
    15. Rezwana Rafiq & Michael G. McNally, 2023. "An exploratory analysis of alternative travel behaviors of ride-hailing users," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 571-605, April.
    16. Agrawal, David R. & Zhao, Weihua, 2023. "Taxing Uber," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    17. Tirachini, Alejandro & del Río, Mariana, 2019. "Ride-hailing in Santiago de Chile: Users’ characterisation and effects on travel behaviour," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 46-57.
    18. Xiaoxia Dong & Erick Guerra & Ricardo A. Daziano, 2022. "Impact of TNC on travel behavior and mode choice: a comparative analysis of Boston and Philadelphia," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(6), pages 1577-1597, December.
    19. Hossain Mohiuddin, 2021. "Planning for the First and Last Mile: A Review of Practices at Selected Transit Agencies in the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, February.
    20. Berrebi, Simon J. & Watkins, Kari E., 2020. "Who’s ditching the bus?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 21-34.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0262496. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.