{"id":151416,"date":"2019-07-08T08:14:16","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T12:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=151416"},"modified":"2019-07-11T09:43:53","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T13:43:53","slug":"surprising-nyc-ridesharing-study-findings-transit-climate-implications-policymakers-uconn-researchers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/07\/surprising-nyc-ridesharing-study-findings-transit-climate-implications-policymakers-uconn-researchers-say\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Ridesharing Study Has Implications for Policymakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers have limited access to information about how people use popular ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft. But recent analysis of aggregate data about ridesharing trips in New York City, conducted by researchers at UConn and published last month in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board<\/em><\/a>, sheds new light on use of the service by people in the city\u2019s outer borough neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Analyzing available data from New York City\u2019s Taxi and Limousine Commission, a local regulator that requires some limited reporting from ridesharing companies about the trips they provide within the city, the researchers found that for-hire trips in New York\u2019s five boroughs increased by 46 percent \u2013 82 million rides annually \u2013 from 2014 to 2017.<\/p>\n

What surprised the researchers, however, was that, even within the limits of available data, the surge in rideshare trips that originated outside of Manhattan was apparent and significant. Rideshare trips starting in the outer boroughs have exploded, increasing to 56 percent of the market in neighborhoods that are typically home to minority and low-income households that do not own vehicles of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are really important things that are happening, and they\u2019re changing the city,\u201d said Carol Atkinson-Palombo, a professor in UConn\u2019s Department of Geography, co-director of the Transportation Technology & Society Research Group and the lead author of the study. \u201cWe really can\u2019t afford to not have more transparency about what\u2019s going on, because policymakers can\u2019t respond if they don\u2019t have a sense of what\u2019s happening, and we can\u2019t rely on the companies to optimize the public good.\u201d<\/p>\n

These neighborhoods have typically been underserved by public transit as well as traditional taxi services, Atkinson-Palombo said, and while companies like Uber and Lyft may well be serving a mobility need, and doing so in a way that is convenient to users, the fact that they are companies primarily driven by profit raises significant equity concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom one side, the service is filling a gap, and that\u2019s a really positive thing,\u201d said Atkinson-Palombo. \u201cBut I think we have some concerns that they are for-profit entities and, at some point, especially now that they\u2019ve gone public, they might need to charge market rates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riders also have no control over weather or traffic conditions that can enable the companies to enact surge pricing, she said, which raises a real vulnerability for users who come to rely on the service.<\/p>\n

\u201cMobility is so important,\u201d she said, \u201cand you can\u2019t be held to ransom\u2026.they\u2019re not accountable to anybody and, at the end of the day, their remit is not to provide public transit. Their remit is to make profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The increase in ridership also has implications for cities trying to address greenhouse gas emission targets and enact climate action plans, Atkinson-Palombo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these trips that are being take are probably something called \u2018induced travel,\u2019 so it\u2019s like extra on top,\u201d she said, \u201cand there are going to be greenhouse gas emission implications from that. Very few of the cars are electric vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Increased usage of single-ride vehicles, and the practice known as \u201cdeadheading\u201d \u2013 where most Uber and Lyft drivers spend a significant portion of time operating without a passenger as they travel from drop-off to pick-up points \u2013 all contribute to increased roadway congestion and vehicle tailpipe emissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has potentially profound impact on climate change and greenhouse gas emission policies,\u201d Atkinson-Palombo said. \u201cEspecially if you\u2019re thinking about the amount of emissions that would be incurred if everybody was moving by Uber and Lyft, because they\u2019re lower occupancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Atkinson-Palombo said the study was preliminary work, she said it represented \u201ca really good starting point for asking questions\u201d about the impact of increased ridesharing usage, particularly in areas that are not as densely populated as Manhattan. She said that regulators in New York and in other cities, including Chicago, are starting to tighten up reporting requirements for ridesharing companies because they understand the need for better data and transparency in the industry.<\/p>\n

The researchers intend to more closely examine the advertising and marketing being used by ridesharing companies to determine if the surge in outer borough usage can be attributed to business strategies targeting so-called \u201ctransit deserts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUber and Lyft, they don\u2019t break even,\u201d Atkinson-Palombo said. \u201cThey\u2019re subsidized trips, and so they might be really massively marketing their services at a really heavy discount, but we don\u2019t know because we can\u2019t see any of the pricing data. But we\u2019ll be able to find out from people.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said her research group is also working to partner with an advocacy organization, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign<\/a>, to conduct interviews and focus groups in outer borough neighborhoods \u2013starting in the Bronx and then moving to Queens \u2013 to learn directly from ridesharing drivers and users why and under what circumstances riders choose to use the services and how policymakers might best meet their mobility needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese patterns have revealed that there\u2019s demand in this particular corridor,\u201d Atkinson-Palombo said. \u201cNow, can we either do something that\u2019s kind of a partnership with transit, or can transit come in and see whether they want to fill that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atkinson-Palombo\u2019s collaborators on the study were civil and environmental engineering graduate researcher Lorenzo Varone and civil and environmental engineering professor Norman Garrick, co-director of the Transportation Technology & Society Research Group. For more information about the group, please visit tts.uconn.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The study was funded through the Center for Advanced Multimodal Mobility Solutions and Education, a consortium of five universities \u2013 including UConn \u2013 with outstanding programs in synergistic research, education, technology transfer and innovation on multimodal transportation planning, design, operations, and maintenance. For more information, please visit cammse.uncc.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new UConn study found that ridesharing services are changing New York City, especially in neighborhoods that are typically home to minority and low-income people who do not own vehicles of their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":151704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,2226,2076,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2168],"class_list":["post-151416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-clas","category-research","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 04:02:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151416"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151892,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151416\/revisions\/151892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/151704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151416"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=151416"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=151416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}