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4 The picture of urban transportation is rapidly evolving in the United States, particularly since the advent of transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft in the early 2010s. The rise of TNCs and ubiquitous mobile computing technologies have catalyzed a reexamination of many aspects of transportation in the United States. For instance, questions remain as to whether: ⢠TNCs themselves are fundamentally transforming the way people move in cities or merely represent a reorganization and expansion of markets for taxis and other for-hire transportation services. ⢠Recent declines in public transit ridership, after a decade or more of growth nationally, may represent a real change in how people are using public transit or are symptomatic of cyclical factors that had been obscured during an earlier period of economic recession and higher gas prices. As part of a broader inquiry into how emerging shared modes of transportation interact with public transit and private autos, this analysis combines several sources of information about the use of TNCs in the United States. This report is an extension of the work contained in TCRP Research Report 188: Shared Mobility and the Transformation of Public Transit (2016). This second phase of the work builds understanding of how shared modesâand TNCs in particularâinteract with the use of public transit and personal automobiles. The study attempts to broaden the understanding of the interplay among emerging and estab- lished modes of transportation by approaching from several angles the question of how shared modes, and particularly TNCs, are being incorporated into the mix of transportation options. Information sources for this research include: ⢠TNC trip data. Hourly origin-destination TNC trip data for five regions (Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) was provided by a major TNC and similar modeled information for the city of San Francisco was provided by the San Francisco County Trans- portation Authority (SFCTA). The nature and format of the TNC trip data is described in Appendix A and summaries of the data for each of the five regions is provided in Appendix B. ⢠Shared Mobility Survey. A survey of more than 10,000 transit and other shared mobility users in eight metropolitan areas was administered by the researchers. This survey and its results are referred to as the âShared Mobility Surveyâ throughout this report. The survey is discussed in detail in Chapter 4 and Appendices D and E. ⢠Four Agency Survey. Transit rider surveys about TNC use were administered by public transit agencies in Atlanta, the San Francisco Bay Area, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. This survey, referred to throughout the report as the Four Agency Survey, is discussed in detail in Chapter 4 and the instrument is presented in Appendix F. C H A P T E R 1 Introduction
