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Scholarly Works (2 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2019)

The rapid emergence and growth of transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber, Lyft, and Didi Chuxing, operating app-based on-demand ride-sourcing services, has led to a debate over the role of TNCs in the urban transport system. The growth of the ride-sourcing business has brought significant challenges for planners, engineers, and policy makers, due to the magnitude and uncertainty of its impacts. This dissertation focuses on several aspects of on-demand mobility, mostly related to equity and behavior, and answers some of the most debated questions about ride-sourcing to provide important evidence for engineers, planners and policy makers on future ride-sourcing related policy decisions.

The equity analysis investigates the effects of ride-sourcing fare changes to passengers with different socio-economic backgrounds. Using a large GPS-based travel dataset from 2015 in Shanghai, I conducted panel analysis of how ride-sourcing demand was related to average property value, as a proxy for socioeconomic status, measured at small spatial scale at trip origins and destinations. I modeled the ride-sourcing demand (for pick-ups and drop-offs separately) as a product of several spatial and temporal characteristics, using a negative binomial regression with fixed effects whose functional form is appropriate for dispersed count data. The results imply that a decrease in ride-sourcing fares would likely benefit middle to high income travelers more than low-income travelers, by making ride-sourcing an economically competitive mode for those groups. Usage is much higher in neighborhoods with higher property values when fares are lower. At the same time, however, there is still significant though lower use of ride-sourcing in lower-income neighborhoods, and usage in those locations is less responsive to the fare. I conclude that ride-sourcing policy which results in fare increases would likely to pose a substantial burden for lower-income travelers, although the number of such lower income travelers may be small compared to the number of middle-to-high income travelers.

The behavioral analysis focuses on three questions: (1) Is parking supply associated with lower ride-sourcing demand? (2) Does better transit access reduce or increase the use of ride-hailing? and (3) Does higher congestion affect ride-sourcing demand? I modeled the ride-sourcing demand (for pick-ups and drop-offs separately) using a generalized additive mixed model (GAMM). The results suggest that first, parking would not necessarily reduce the demand for ride-sourcing unless the parking supply is large enough. Second, whether ride-sourcing compete or complement bus transit depends on the coverage of bus services: they tended to compete when the density of bus stops is high, and complement each other when there are fewer bus stops. Third, ride-sourcing demand was positively correlated with congestion, except that when congestion is severe, there were fewer pick-ups.

In addition to the panel study, I used Google Map API to figure out if each actual ride-sourcing trip has transit alternative. I found that over 90% of the actual ride-sourcing trips have transit alternatives, but transit compete poorly with ride-sourcing because of much longer travel time, need multiple transfer and longer walking. Finally, I discussed policy implication based on these empirical findings.

  • 1 supplemental PDF
Cover page: On-demand Mobility of the Future: Equity, Behavior and Policy
  • Article
UCCONNECT (2016)
Public transit investments are a large and growing share of all transportation investments in the state of California, and such critical investments should be evaluated partly on their economic benefits. Taking such benefits into account could alter investment, service, and service restructuring decisions taken by transit agencies in the state. The relationship of public transportation to economic productivity, and spatial patterns of industrial location, is understudied. This project investigated how changes in rail transit service in California metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego) are associated with firm clustering by industry and with commercial property values. A mixed methods approach was used. One strand of the research involved first, describing location patterns by industry according to transit access, and second, quantitatively modeling the relationship between transit access and (a) employment densification by industry and (b) commercial property values, using instrumental variables techniques with dynamic panel modeling in order to better infer causal relationships. The second strand consisted of interviews and other qualitative research aimed at finding possible explanations for firm location and expansion, and firm productivity. The quantitative research found that rail development generally promotes employment agglomeration and increased land value, but the magnitude of such effects differs across regions. San Francisco County had the highest employment densification and land value associated with rail proximity, while the LA region also had a relatively strong relationship between rail access and both employment density and property value. Rail access in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, where Silicon Valley is situated, had a small relationship with employment densification but a positive effect on land values. On the contrary, rail development in the San Diego region was positively associated with employment density, but negatively associated with land value appreciation. Our interviews were consistent with these quantitative findings, and suggested that the differences between regions are due to differences in historical land development and use patterns as well as urban land regulations. In the San Francisco Bay Area, developers and real estate brokers report that rail transit plays the greatest role in the City of San Francisco, with relatively weak importance in Silicon Valley due to higher parking provisions and employer-provided transportation amenities such as shuttles. In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, rail transit is most highly valued in the dense downtown Los Angeles area, and is perceived to be playing an increasingly important role across the region as in places where traffic congestion is high and increasing.
    Cover page: Public Transportation and Industrial Location Patterns in California
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