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Providing a 5-Minute Pickup Priority for Ridehail Users Agreeing to Pool: Potential Impacts on Curtailing Bus Delay and Enhancing Equity
Posted: 5/2/2023

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential to significantly enhance equity and reduce congestion experienced by city bus riders due to transportation network company (TNC) operations (most especially within corridors with significant bus service) through select TNC or government policy measures. The study analyzes data from a survey conducted by a large TNC, coupled with appended demographic and trip data, to ascertain the impacts of changing private party and shared party TNC pricing and trip times to encourage TNC customers to choose a shared instead of a ride-alone trip. The research looks at the impacts of both total trip + wait time and price on customer decisions to choose a pooling option or to instead insist on a private trip. Compressing the difference in duration between shared and drive-alone trips (including wait time for initial pick up) by 5 minutes is shown to roughly double the proportion of TNC trips that customers choose to share to about 50% of all such trips.

URL: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop23013/fhwahop23013.pdf


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