Use of Exclusive and Pooled Ridehailing Services in Three Mexican Cities

Abstract

The global expansion of ridehailing platforms has been accompanied by a diversification of service offerings as platforms fit within new urban contexts. While ridehailing has been of great interest to transportation researchers, analysis of its adoption and use in developing cities that differentiates between service offerings is lacking. To help address this knowledge gap, this study analyzes primary survey data collected from frequent users of the DiDi Chuxing ridehailing platform in three Mexican cities: Mérida, Toluca de Lerdo, and Aguascalientes. It investigates how ridehailing fits into the travel behavior of its users, explicitly differentiating between express (exclusive) and comparte (pooled) services. Findings were that (i) frequent use of ridehailing is positively correlated with use of public transport—city-run and privately-operated buses—and taxi, but negatively correlated with use of private car and motorcycle; and (ii) ridehailing trips are more likely to substitute public transport and taxi trips, but that the mode substitution depends on the service offering, with high substitutability between express and comparte. This degree of substitutability suggests that there is potential to encourage ridehailing users to pool trips, increasing the occupancy rate of ridehailing vehicles and reducing their negative impacts on congestion. Among the many factors involved in choosing between exclusive and pooled services, study participants rated safety, travel time, travel time reliability, and price as key determinants, with a highly elastic relation between travel time and price. These results inform efforts by urban transportation policymakers and ridehailing operators to encourage pooling in the Latin American context.