Project: #350 Ridehailing Service Equity in Normal and Rare Conditions Progress Report - Reporting Period Ending: Sept. 30, 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: Sept. 29, 2021, 2:56 p.m.) % Project Completed to Date: 50 % Grant Award Expended: 28 % 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, as well as how COVID has affected ridership; (2) characterize demographic and geographic patterns of drivers and passengers that use ridesourcing 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 still on track with respect to our Gantt chart for the first two tasks. Our interview efforts have been delayed because of COVID, but we are moving forward with them now. Our primary accomplishments so far have been: 1) Task 1: Collected, processed and reviewed all relevant data for Task 1 and ran preliminary analysis. Identified data and model challenges and limitations and updated methodological approach accordingly. Discovered that we will not able to identify the effect of Uber and Lyft on the taxi industry in particular because Uber and Lyft workers are classified inconsistently in government data - sometimes as taxi and sometimes not. Conducted preliminary analysis on second hypothesis of another affected industry: bars and drinking establishments. Identified novel hypothesis about the kinds of industries affected by Uber and Lyft, based on stability of wages and employment in those industries, and identified a metric for quantifying it. Moving forward with testing this hypothesis in the analysis. Using difference-in-difference regression for the city of Chicago, we have identified that rides from low income communities decreased less than rides from high income communities during the lockdown. This implies that rides from low-income areas were less able to adapt to the stay at home orders (have more essential rides), providing one indication of which rides are essential. We hired a postdoctoral fellow to investigate TNC's ridership in rare conditions outside of the COVID pandemic. Specifically we are working to extend the Chicago Covid analysis to other cities (NYC) to see how it will compare for robustness. We also intend to replicate the Covid analysis for other rare events (heat wave weather alerts) as the shock. This investigation seeks to understand how Covid impacts socio economic TNC dependence compared to other types of rare events (weather). Covid lockdowns caused an overall decrease in ridership across income and demographic groups; we anticipate that heat waves will cause an overall increase in ridership. We are looking to compare how a decreasing shock to ridership changes TNC ridership compared to an increasing shock (heat wave). 2) Task 2: Identified equity metrics by neighborhood for use in the analysis. Met with our deployment partner several times to discuss reporting, decision-making, and organizational challenges in adapting routing. Developed an initial model of COVID exposure risk in transit use compared to TNC use. 3) Task 3: Delayed schedule due to COVID is now moving forward. Developed initial interview protocols and are preparing documentation for IRB approval. Impacts We are still early in the project and do not yet have impacts to report. We expect to be able to report more impact in the second half of the project and especially as the project wraps up and we have conclusions and publications. We plan to produce a policy brief summarizing relevant findings and recommendations. 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 are now moving forward. We have prepared initial interview protocols and are preparing IRB submission. Once we have IRB approval, we can begin interviews. Additionally, one of the graduate students originally budgeted for this project, Lily Hanig, received a prestigious NSF GRFP fellowship and has shifted to focus on that project. We worked to hire a postdoc to complete the work originally planned for Lily, but partly due to university delays it took us some time to hire the postdoc. We finally have the postdoc in place now, and we have a plan to complete all of the proposed work and use the allocated budget by the end of the project period.