Modeling Dockless Shared E-Scooter Demand by Time of Day: A Case Study of Austin

Abstract

The goal of the current study is to identify and quantify the influence of various contributing factors on dockless e-scooter demand. Drawing on high-resolution e-scooter trip level data for 2019 from Austin, Texas, we develop census tract (CT) level demand data for four time periods of the day. The time-period specific data is partitioned for weekdays and weekends. Using the prepared datasets, we develop a joint panel linear regression (JPLR) model framework that accommodates for the influence of unobserved factors at multiple levels-CT, month, day, and time period levels. The analysis results indicate that the proposed JPLR models outperform the independent linear regression models for both weekdays and weekends. The results also manifest a significant association between e-scooter demand and several independent variables including sociodemographic attributes, transportation infrastructure variables, land use and built environment variables, meteorological attributes, and situational attributes. Further, several panel-specific correlation effects are found to be significant across four dimensions highlighting the importance of accommodating the influence of common unobserved factors on e-scooter demand across different time-of-day dimensions. The model validation exercise results revealed that the proposed models performed well compared to the independent models. Finally, the estimated models are employed to conduct a policy exercise illustrating the value of the estimated models for understanding CT level e-scooter demand on weekdays and weekends. The results indicate that land use mix, proportion of commuters, and season are some of the most influential factors for e-scooter demand.