A Philadelphia Ride-Share Story: An Investigation of Ride-Share’s Impact on Transit
Abstract
The impact of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft on transit has been inconclusive. This knowledge gap hinders cities’ and transit agencies’ efforts to improve transit service. In my dissertation, I examine how and where ride-hailing services have influenced transit ridership, as well as who uses ride-hailing services and why. First, I use time series analyses with a regression discontinuity design to examine the change in system-wide transit ridership in the Philadelphia region after the entry of ride-hailing services. I then use multilevel analyses to investigate the relationship between post-ride-hailing ridership change at bus stops and neighborhood characteristics, land use factors, and bus service levels. Finally, I investigate ride-hailing user and trip characteristics using a survey among 600 ride-hailing customers. I also use mixed multinomial logistic regression analyses to explore factors that are associated with individual ride-hailing users’ willingness to choose ride-hailing services versus transit based on response from stated preference choice experiments in the survey. My findings 1). add evidence to ride-hailing services’ substitution effect on transit; 2). indicate that buses and bus stops that serve more passengers can be as prone to ridership loss as less busy buses and bus stops in the post-ride-hailing period; 3). suggest that shortening overall transit travel time could be more effective in attracting ride-hailing customers to transit than reducing transit fares alone; 4). remind transit agencies to pay particular attention to female and lower-income residents’ travel needs amid the rapid growth of ride-hailing services.
Subject Area
Urban planning|Transportation|Geography
Recommended Citation
Dong, Xiaoxia, "A Philadelphia Ride-Share Story: An Investigation of Ride-Share’s Impact on Transit" (2020). Dissertations available from ProQuest. AAI27836288.
https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI27836288