Does Adoption of Ridehailing Result in More Frequent Sustainable Mobility Choices? An Investigation Based on the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) 2017 Data

Vivekananda Das

doi:10.3390/smartcities3020020

Abstract

Among many changes potentially induced by the adoption of ridehailing, one key area of interest in transportation and urban planning research is how these services affect sustainable mobility choices, such as usage of public transit, walking, and biking modes and lower ownership of household vehicles. In this study, by using subsamples of the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) 2017 data, propensity score matching technique is applied to generate matched samples of ridehailing adopters and non-adopters from ten different core-based statistical areas in the U.S. Results from multivariable count data regression models built on the matched samples indicate that, on average, the count of public transit trips is greater for adopters compared against identical non-adopters in all ten areas. Regarding average counts of walking and biking trips, adopters tend to make more trips in most of the places, although a few exceptions are also found. However, the relationship between ridehailing adoption and count of household vehicles appears to be more complicated as adopters, on average, seem to have a lower or higher number of vehicles than identical non-adopters, depending on the area. One major limitation of this study is that, in the statistical analyses, effects of attitudinal and detailed geographic variables are not directly controlled for, which complicates causal interpretations of findings.

Highlights

Cities across the globe, faced with challenges posed by rapid urbanization and climate change, are exploring strategies to deal with growing demands in sustainable ways [1]
I refer to trip making by public transit, walking, and biking modes and lower ownership of household vehicles as “sustainable mobility choices.”
For each mobility choice, an independent sample t-test was conducted to identify whether the average count for adopters and non-adopters are significantly different at the 5% significance level

Summary

Introduction

Cities across the globe, faced with challenges posed by rapid urbanization and climate change, are exploring strategies to deal with growing demands in sustainable ways [1]. Sustainability has become a crucial topic in policy dialogues and academic research, there appears to be no universally agreed-upon definition of the terms sustainability, sustainable development, or sustainable mobility [4]. Despite disagreements on the definition, transportation and urban planning practitioners generally consider the promotion of multimodality, which incorporates higher usage of public transit, walking, and biking modes, and lower ownership and usage of private vehicles, as more sustainable in nature [4,5,6,7,8]. I refer to trip making by public transit, walking, and biking modes and lower ownership of household vehicles as “sustainable mobility choices.”. Among the different varieties of shared mobility, ridehailing—services that enable users to get on-demand and short-term mobility access using smartphone apps—have drawn particular attention among urban residents, academics, and policymakers. According to the Pew Research Center, about 36% of U.S adults mentioned using ridehailing services by 2018 [10]

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Conclusion