THE COMMUTING REVOLUTION: Ridesharing’s Impact on Public Transportation Ridership and Drunk Driving in the United States

Abstract

The advent of ridesharing in 2011 has brought tremendous change to how society engages with transportation. Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft have been previously documented as the catalysts behind the proliferation of the “gig” economy and the disruption of the taxi industry. However, ridesharing’s impact on other aspects of society, such as public transit ridership and drunk driving, are less understood. This thesis uses a linear fixed-effects model and a difference-in-differences model to first estimate Uber’s entry impact on public transit ridership in 30 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States from 2010 – 2018. Next, this thesis uses a regression discontinuity model to estimate the effect of Uber’s 2016 exit and 2017 re-entry into the city of Corpus Christi on the city’s alcohol-involved automobile accident rates. Findings indicate that Uber significantly negatively effects public transit ridership in the observed MSAs, suggesting it acts as a substitute for public transportation. Additionally, Uber is found to have no impact on alcohol-involved crash rates, indicating that despite its added efficiency, drunk drivers do not change their behaviors when the option of ridesharing is available.