Exploring the Equity of Traditional and Ride-Hailing Taxi Services during Peak Hours

Many people criticize the inequity of traditional taxi (TT) services and believe the entry of ride-hailing taxis (RT) can address the issue. However, this has been understudied in the literature. This paper aims to estimate the equity of TT and RT services during peak hours and to study how the entry of RT affects equity by analyzing trip data of TT and RT in New York City in 2010 and 2017 (before and after the entry of RT). First, we used the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient to estimate the equity of taxi services against population and employment. The results show that the equity of RT in 2017 is higher than that of TT and the equity of TT + RT in 2017 is higher than that of 2010. Mixed geographically weighted regression (MGWR) was applied to determine whether the relationships between taxi trips and population/employment would vary across different taxi zones. The coefficient of variation (CV) of local coefficients of population/employment is used as an indicator of equity. Results show that RT services were more equitable than TT services in 2017 and that the overall taxi service in 2017 was more equitable than that of 2010.