On the inefficiency of ride-sourcing services towards urban congestion

TL;DR

This paper investigates how ride-sourcing services impact urban congestion, revealing that uncoordinated TNC operations can significantly increase travel times and congestion, but strategic parking management can mitigate these effects.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis combined with simulation to quantify TNC impacts on traffic and proposes parking strategies to reduce congestion caused by idle vehicles.

Findings

Uncoordinated TNCs can cause 37% longer travel times.

Shared rides do not significantly reduce total travel distance.

Parking management strategies can cut congestion impacts by up to 7%.

Abstract

The advent of shared-economy and smartphones made on-demand transportation services possible, which created additional opportunities, but also more complexity to urban mobility. Companies that offer these services are called Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) due to their internet-based nature. Although ride-sourcing is the most notorious service TNCs provide, little is known about to what degree its operations can interfere in traffic conditions, while replacing other transportation modes, or when a large number of idle vehicles is cruising for passengers. We experimentally analyze the efficiency of TNCs using taxi trip data from a Chinese megacity and a agent-based simulation with a trip-based MFD model for determining the speed. We investigate the effect of expanding fleet sizes for TNCs, passengers' inclination towards sharing rides, and strategies to alleviate urban congestion. We show that the lack of coordination of objectives between TNCs and society can create 37% longer travel times and significant congestion. Moreover, allowing shared rides is not capable of decreasing total distance traveled due to higher empty kilometers traveled. Elegant parking management strategies can prevent idle vehicles from cruising without assigned passengers and lower to 7% the impacts of the absence of coordination.