Suggested Citation:
Circella, Giovanni and Farzad Alemi (2018) Chapter Five - Transport Policy in the Era of Ridehailing and Other Disruptive Transportation Technologies. Advances in Transport Policy and Planning 1, 119 - 144

Transportation is changing at an unprecedented pace. New transportation options provided by shared mobility providers are expanding the set of travel alternatives and they account for an increasing percentage of total trips. In particular, ridehailing services, such as those provided by Uber and Lyft, have become a popular option for trips in cities and metropolitan areas of North America. Understanding the impacts of these mobility services on the use of other travel modes and other components of travel behavior is not easy. In this chapter, we analyze the use of ridehailing using data from the California Millennials Dataset, a rich dataset that contains information on individual attitudes, residential location, vehicle ownership, travel behavior and the adoption of emerging transportation services from approximately 2000 millennials and members of the preceding Generation X in California. We find that users of ridehailing are predominantly well-educated independent millennials or young Gen Xers, who do not have children and live in urban neighborhoods. These travelers also tend to use ridehailing more frequently. Suburban residents who live with their families are less likely to use Uber/Lyft frequently, though their likelihood of using ridehailing increases if they make long-distance trips by plane. We find that single-user ridehailing replaces the use of public transit, walking and bicycling, and, to some extent, the use of a private vehicle. Only a minority of travelers increases public transportation use, e.g., through using ridehailing for first-/last-mile access to public transportation terminals. Based on the results from this research, we urge planners and policy makers to regulate these services to maximize societal benefits through a combination of pricing and other policies that lead to the integration of ridehailing with other transportation options, expand travel options for those that do not own a car, increase the shared used of vehicles, and support the use of public transportation and active travel modes.

Keywords: Shared mobility; Travel behavior; Transport policy; Ridehailing; Autonomous vehicles