Abstract
Abstract The alternative public transportation options such as subway, bus, or taxis compete with each other to attract passengers. The competition depends on many factors such as travel time, reliability and convenience. Convenience is a collection of attributes affecting the attractiveness of the service including access and egress easiness, service frequency, crowding, comfort and information availability. It can be argued that the taxi preference when there is viable public transportation option is associated with the perceived convenience of taxis. The objective of this study is to evaluate the value associated with convenience of taxis in New York City by utilizing the large taxi trip data. First, the taxi trips which could be replaced by subway without any access or service availability issues (e.g., no transfers between subway lines) are extracted. Then, a multilevel modeling approach was utilized to estimate the monetary value associated with taxi convenience were estimated for different day-of-week and time-of-day periods, and areas in Manhattan. The results show that the value of convenience varies depending on the ratio of taxi travel time to subway travel time, and occasionally intersect when the ratio is close to 1. Furthermore, the corresponding value of convenience (VC) at those points (i.e., taxi travel time is equal to subway travel time) is close to $32/hr for all the zones during weekdays and weekends. Results also indicate that value of time is generally higher at peak hours during weekdays, whereas it is lower during weekend and social period at night and early morning hours.
Highlights
Alternative public transportation options such as subway, bus, or taxi compete with each other every day to attract passengers
The study was conducted by using NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC)’s taxi trips dataset for February 2016 in Manhattan, New York City
ΔFarei,pz = VCpz*TTi,pz + VTpz*(STi,pz − TTi,pz) where ΔFarei,pz is the fare difference between taxi trip “i” at time period-zone pair “pz” (e.g., 07:00–10:00 – CBD) and an equivalent subway trip; VCpz is the per minute dollar value associated with the convenience of taxis for time period-zone pair “pz”; TTi,pz is the taxi travel time of trip “i” at time period-zone pair “pz”; VTpz is the per minute dollar value of time for time period-zone pair “pz”; and STi,pz is the subway travel time of an equivalent subway trip for trip “i” at time period-zone pair “pz”
Summary
Alternative public transportation options such as subway, bus, or taxi compete with each other every day to attract passengers. The share of taxis in the “non-shared ride” market has been continuously reducing in the last eight years (Paraboschi et al, 2015) This decline is partly due to the ride-hailing companies who take advantage of the mobile technologies and offer ridesharing option to their users to reduce the individual trip cost while increasing the travel time – reducing the convenience. Al-Ayyash et al (2016) showed that a shared-ride taxi service can attract new customers due to lower trip costs Utilization of such shared-ride taxis depends significantly on the fare difference, which relates to the trade-off between the travel time ( value of time) and convenience. This study can help calibrating such pricing efforts by identifying the value associated with convenience and time as well as the ratio of these variables
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