Characterizing the adoption and frequency of use of a pooled rides service

Abstract

Pooled-ride services have a significant potential for reducing traffic externalities and enhancing transportation systems in the urban environment. These services and their users’ characteristics still need further inspection and exploration. We investigated factors encouraging the shift from the currently used modes to pooled-ride-services, the choice between different pooled services vehicles types, and the frequency of use of pooled-rides, using data collected via a large-scale online survey conducted in Mexico City, Mexico (CDMX) for a start-up that organizes pooled rides, Jetty. We modeled the pooled-ride-service adoption process as a function of the users’ sociodemographics, latent travel attitudes, accessibility to public transportation, trip characteristics, reasons to use the service, and users’ activities during the trips. We estimated hybrid choice models and binary logit models, which show that users’ sociodemographic and travel attitudes are the main factors impacting the shift from different modes to pooled rides. Service-related characteristics such as multi-tasking, trip fare, and avoiding parking problems also impact the shift decision. On the other hand, the frequency of service use is mainly impacted by trip characteristics such as total trip distance, and the headway at the user’s home location nearest Metro stations. Income, employment status, number of cars in the household, and gender were the only sociodemographic factors impacting the service use frequency directly and indirectly.