Longitudinal Analysis of Transit-Integrated Ridesourcing Users and Their Trips

Abstract

Several municipal transit agencies have partnered with transportation network companies to provide a range of services, but data restrictions have limited research on trip-level observations of transit-integrated ridesourcing users. The goal of this study was to understand how users’ trip-making behaviors adapted to a transit-integrated ridesourcing pilot in Waterloo, Ontario. This research conducted a longitudinal analysis of 178 unique users and temporal analyses of their 4,536 ridesourcing trips (rides) taken throughout the pilot from November 2018 to December 2019. Trip type and frequency changes over time were measured for frequent, average, and infrequent users. Transit, walking, and cycling alternatives to the pilot rides were generated and characterized based on their complementarity with transit. The number of unique users and daily ridership increased over time, as new users made their first trips and existing users made trips more frequently. Frequent users shifted toward less transit-competitive trip types whereas average and infrequent users had a sporadic but larger share of more transit-competitive trip types. The pilot was mostly used during off-peak service periods, when transit was less frequent, which suggests these systems are valuable for nonwork trips. Transit trip alternatives were not temporally competitive with rides. Cycling was competitive with 5% to 10% of rides and was consistently faster than walking and transit alternatives. Walking was not a practical alternative to rides in most cases. This analysis may inform other agencies of performance evaluation techniques for their transit-integrated ridesourcing pilots and the unique characteristics of trips taken by users of this mode.