Boosting Public Transit Use with Ride-Hailing Service? Evidence from a Multi-City Experiment

The ‘last mile problem’ is considered one of the most intractable public transit problems in the United States and an important obstacle for reducing the carbon intensity of transport in cities. As markets for ridehailing services have matured, governments around the U.S. are developing programs that increase the accessibility and utilization of transit systems by leveraging the complementarity between ridehailing and rail services. We conducted a large field experiment with Uber riders in Chicago, Washington D.C and the SF Bay Area to evaluate changes in rider behavior and reduce the external costs associated with private transit services. Preliminary results indicate that ridehailing subsidies for the first/last mile segment of a rail trip can induce increases in transit-connected trips and reductions in vehicle miles traveled in private vehicles. We find that the effects are strongest for participants who live/work near transit stations with modest use of transit services at baseline. We develop a structural model to examine the change in utility that riders derive from their rail system as it becomes cheaper to access. We find that a dollar invested in first/last mile services yields $1.25 in social benefits for every $1 invested in the program.