Abstract
Spatial inequalities in urban public transportation are a major concern in many countries but little of this research has focused specifically on taxi services. The taxi situation has grown more complex, as traditional ride-for-hire services face growing competition from e-hailing apps like Uber in the U.S., or Didi and Kuaidi in China. In 2014, Didi and Kuaidi triggered a nationwide subsidy war, with possible effects on the spatial inequality of taxi services. Taxi trajectory data from Shenzhen collected during the subsidy war shows that this competition reduced spatial inequality in the inner city but aggravated it in the outer city. In this study, a measure of service rate to depict the quantity of taxi services is proposed to calculate a Gini coefficient for evaluating change in the spatial inequality of taxi services. The Theil index and its decomposition were used to distinguish the contribution of Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) in the inner and the outer city and compare them to the overall spatial inequality of taxi services in Shenzhen, TAZs in the outer city had greater inequality in taxi services than the inner city. Furthermore, the primary contributor to overall inequality in taxi services was inequality within, rather than between, the inner and outer city. Moreover, the mean values for the changed service rates in the inner city were always larger than the outer city, and the inner city had a more equitable changed service rate than the outer city. These results could serve as a foundation for improving taxi services citywide.
Highlights
The issue of public transportation inequity has been a widely discussed topic [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Several conclusions can be drawn from Table 3: (1) The trends of change in the mean of arrival service rate (ASR) and departure service rate (DSR) for the inner city are identical, which is the same as the trends of change in the mean of ASR and DSR for the outer city
The research presented in this paper investigated the spatial inequality of taxi services in the context of the 2014 subsidy war among e-hailing apps in Shenzhen, China
Summary
The issue of public transportation inequity has been a widely discussed topic [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Few studies focus on spatial inequality in taxi services. Recognizing the change of spatial inequality in taxi services in the context of a subsidy war could support sustainable planning for equitable taxi services. Taxicabs play an important role in daily travel because they provide an uninterrupted door-to-door service [8]. E-hailing services (e.g., Didi in China and Uber in the U.S.) offer passengers convenient booking services that prevent them from waiting on the street for a long time, especially during a day with bad weather. E-hailing services provide a new mechanism for cabdrivers to find passengers while using third-party applications, allowing cabdrivers to acquire origin and the destination information in advance of a trip. In order to attract more users, e-hailing app companies distribute subsidies to passengers and cabdrivers
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