Project: #350 Ridehailing Service Equity in Normal and Rare Conditions Progress Report - Reporting Period Ending: March 31, 2021 Principal Investigator: Jeremy Michalek Status: Active Start Date: Jan. 1, 2021 End Date: June 30, 2022 Research Type: Advanced Grant Type: Research Grant Program: FAST Act - Mobility National (2016 - 2022) Grant Cycle: 2021 Mobility UTC "Big Idea" Progress Report (Last Updated: March 31, 2021, 7:47 a.m.) % Project Completed to Date: 15 % Grant Award Expended: 2 % Match Expended & Document: 55 USDOT Requirements Accomplishments The goal of this project is to investigate the economic and equity impacts of ridesourcing services like Uber and Lyft along with public policies that may enhance benefits and mitigate private and social costs and inequities. Our tasks for the USDOT-funded portion of the project include (1) leverage historical data to econometrically estimate the causal impact of Uber and Lyft market entry on wages and transit ridership, and how covid mandates have impacts ridership; (2) characterize demographic and geographic patterns of drivers and passengers that use ride-hailing services in Chicago and other cities; and (3) use interviews and surveys to develop a deep understanding of driver, rider, and other stakeholder perspectives on equity implications of ridesourcing. We are on track with respect to our Gantt chart for the first two tasks, and we are delaying our interview efforts because of COVID. Our primary progress so far has been in reviewing the literature on econometric methods to assess implications of ridesourcing on US cities, data collection and preliminary analysis, and model development. We have also analyzed and visualized transportation data from Chicago, including patterns TNC ridership and transit ridership. We also begun to unpack and assess the usefulness of various wage and employment data by sector such as the Quarterly Census of Economic Wages (QCEW) and the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) databases. We established a biweekly meeting with all collaborators and our deployment partner (Pittsburgh Port Authority) to regularly discuss progress and share ideas. Our work has begun to explore the impact of rare events on ridership by collecting information regarding the COVID mandates, as well as Uber and Lyft COVID policy shifts. Currently we have identified equity considerations by formatting census tract, walk score, and transit availability data. This will allow our passenger ride-hailing patterns to be characterized by neighborhood transit score and income demographics. Impacts We are still early in the project and do not yet have impacts to report. Other No other outputs to report yet. Outcomes New Partners No new partners to report. Issues COVID has delayed our schedule for qualitative interviews, but we expect to be able to make up that time once we are able to re-engage with drivers, riders, and other stakeholders. We will reassess our plan for Task 3 this summer.