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Impacts of transportation network companies on urban mobility

Abstract

The role of transportation network companies (TNCs) in the urban transport system is under intense debate. In this study, we systematically assess three aspects of the net impacts of TNCs on urban mobility in the United States—road congestion, transit ridership and private vehicle ownership—and examine how these impacts have evolved over time. Based on a set of fixed-effect panel models estimated using metropolitan statistical area level data, we find that the entrance of TNCs led to increased road congestion in terms of both intensity (by 0.9%) and duration (by 4.5%), an 8.9% decline in transit ridership and an insignificant change in vehicle ownership. Despite the ideal of providing a sustainable mobility solution by promoting large-scale car sharing, our analysis suggests that TNCs have intensified urban transport challenges since their debut in the United States.

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Fig. 1: Multiple pathways of TNCs’ impact on urban mobility.

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Data availability

The TNC entry time datasets are available from the corresponding author on request. The publicly accessible databases on public transit ridership, congestion, GDP, population, household median income and unemployment rate can be downloaded at: (1) National Transit Database (NTD): https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/ntd-data; (2) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA): https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/perf_measurement/ucr/; (3) Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA): https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp; (4) American Community Survey (ACS): https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data.html.

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Acknowledgements

The research is supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore, under the CREATE programme, the Singapore–MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre and the Future Urban Mobility Interdisciplinary Research Group.

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Contributions

M.D. and J.Z. designed the research. H.K. prepared the data. M.D. performed the analysis. M.D., H.K. and J.Z. discussed the results and drafted the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinhua Zhao.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Fig. 1 and Table 1.

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Diao, M., Kong, H. & Zhao, J. Impacts of transportation network companies on urban mobility. Nat Sustain 4, 494–500 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00678-z

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